Standardization News

Board Engages Stakeholders and Promotes Greater Awareness

On Oct. 23-26, 2011, the ASTM International board of directors gathered in New York, N.Y., for the second of its semi-annual meetings of the year. In addition to conducting its policy meetings, the board and senior staff connected with various constituent groups in the local area through outreach events.

A hub of global commerce, the Big Apple was an excellent gathering site for the 25-member leadership team. "Meeting in New York City allowed ASTM's leadership to engage many of the industries that rely on ASTM standards headquartered in or near the New York metropolitan area," said ASTM International President James A. Thomas. "ASTM standards are recognized by buyers and sellers around the world as the technical foundations of product quality and safety."

New York City joins other world-class cities as a destination for the ASTM board to hold meetings and conduct outreach. Past meeting locations were:

For details of the board's deliberations at this meeting, see ReCap.

Outreach Day

One full day of the New York stay was dedicated to outreach, where teams of ASTM board members and staff visited more than 50 corporations, trade associations, regulatory bodies, universities and other organizations in areas such as construction, chemicals, consumer safety, energy, global commerce, metals and more. The organizations visited were:

Corporations/Firms:

Regulatory Offices:

Professional and Trade Associations:

Consumer and Environmental Protection:

Business Councils and Related Groups:

Standardization, Code and Research Organizations:

Universities and Other Institutions:

ASTM Member Workshop

To connect with constituents locally, a Members' Workshop was held Oct. 23 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. ASTM members as well as students from the surrounding area were in attendance at two separate sessions.

ASTM staff covered topics from advances in ASTM electronic tools to upcoming value-added content and tools such as videos in standards, writeable data sheets and report-writing tools. The audience also heard from a member of the ASTM board of directors, Dennis Rounds, a consultant with expertise in environmental and business risk management. Rounds discussed leadership opportunities for ASTM members based on his experiences as a technical committee member and officer and as an ASTM board member.

Dennis Rounds, a member of the ASTM board of directors, presents at the ASTM members' workshop in New York City on Oct. 23, 2011.

The presence of a student contingent served as a reminder of the importance of standards awareness at the university level. In attendance at the member workshop session were students from the class of Angelo Lampousis, Ph.D., adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the City College of New York. Lampousis teaches courses on environmental site assessment, and ASTM standards are a required course component, particularly E1527, Practice for Environmental Site Assessments: Phase I Environmental Site Assessment Process, from Committee E50 on Environmental Assessment, Risk Management and Corrective Action. These CCNY courses directly address the needs of future environmental professionals. (For more on the role of standards in advanced education, see the new column, NextGen.)

Students from the City College of New York attend the members' workshop. Posing with students are: Dennis Rounds (far left), ASTM board of directors and workshop presenter; Angelo Lampousis (back row, middle), Ph.D., who teaches an environmental site assessment course using ASTM standards; and Kevin Shanahan (far right, front), ASTM staff manager, who led the workshop.