Standardization News

Board Actions

The board approved the following actions:

• The Minutes of the April 2024 board meeting.
• The consolidated financial statements and report of the independent accountants, and the annual review of the finance and audit committee charter, as presented.

Global Business Development and Innovation

The global business development team continues to work on five key, strategically important areas:

• ASTM Standardization Impact Report (SIR): The third installment of the SIR on the built environment and infrastructure systems was previewed and presented to the board.
• Healthcare Innovation Workshop: Partnering with AAMI, this workshop will be held Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024 (during November Committee Week), and aims to collect new insights on technology gaps and set standards development priorities for the biotechnology and biotechnology manufacturing industry sectors.
• Sustainability: ASTM has engaged with WAP Sustainability to build on its sustainability initiatives by providing technical expertise related to industrial decarbonization, assessing global initiatives and evaluating activities across ASTM’s standards portfolio.
• Exo Technology Center of Excellence: The ET CoE hosted the Exo Games 2024, August 5-9 at ASTM headquarters in Conshohocken, PA. Podcasts from the Following Seas series are also being produced as part of a grant from the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR).
• Thought Leadership: AC377 is holding its 5th symposium and is developing a new white paper. The group also created a new section on the ASTM.org website to amplify activities for market insights and innovation. New specialty reports will also be published in 2024.

Committee Operations

Dan Smith, vice president of technical committee operations, presented on the “Modernizing Membership” project. This ongoing project promises to enhance and update balloting, document management, and the current MCS membership database, among other elements.

In accordance with the Regulations Governing ASTM Technical Committees, a ballot was conducted by the membership of the committee on healthcare informatics (E31) to formally discharge the committee due to inactivity. The ballot passed.

The 2024 Charles B. Dudley Award winner was approved by the Committee on Publications (COP), and Jen Rodgers, general manager, technical commmittee operations, provided and update on cross-divisional membership activities.

Washington, DC Office

U.S. Congress & Federal 

Agencies Update
In support of the mission of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), ASTM drafted a letter to the U.S. Congress calling for full funding for the agency for the coming year, with the letter transmitted to Capitol Hill on September 19.

In July, the Washington Office arranged meetings for Andy Kireta with the National Institute of Buildings Sciences; the Defense Standardization Office of the Department of Defense; and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Throughout the summer, Kireta also met with each commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

Organizational Outreach & Awareness Update

The Washington Office continues to promote awareness of ASTM to new and long-term partners such as the National Safety Council; the Commercial Spaceflight Federation; and more.

Global Cooperation Board of Directors Report October 2024

The Global Cooperation team continues to advance the reach and influence of ASTM and the relevance and benefit of ASTM standards globally.

Memorandum of Understanding Program (MoU)

The MoU program continues to increase the broad-based global use of ASTM International standards by transitioning economies as indicated by over 9,475 citations.

Capacity Building

The following programming is or has been offered from June through year-end:

• Ten procedural/administrative webinars.
• The third session in ASTM’s webinar series on Environment & Sustainability, held in partnership with the Asian Development Bank. 
• A regional program presented with two Caribbean MoU partners (Antigua and Barbuda and Trinidad and Tobago) to highlight ASTM biodegradable and bio-compostable plastics standards. 
• An October webinar held jointly with Mexican industry and the Mexican Construction and Building Industry Standardization and Certification Organization highlighting reduced carbon emissions in cement.
• A September webinar hosted by the Pan American Standards Commission on the importance of standards in fire safety. 
• Hosting an expert as part of the Visitor Grant Program.
• Global cooperation staff attended the 30th General Assembly of the African Organization for Standardization in Nigeria.
• Staff also participated in the July “Roundtable on the Role of Voluntary Standards in Consumer Protection and Risk-Based Standards Development” hosted by ANSI.
• The September ISO Annual Meeting was also attended by global cooperation staff. ASTM International has obtained provisional observer status in the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change and will participate in the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties in November. 

Brussels Office

The ASTM Brussels Office has engaged with authorities and stakeholders on various fronts at both the European and international levels.

In July, the Brussels Office coordinated outreach visits in Brussels and Leuven for Jeff Grove, vice president of communications and global cooperation. This included discussions with regulators on recent European standardization initiatives; a meeting with the CEN-CENELEC Management Center on the status of the CEN-ASTM collaboration; and more.

In August, staff coordinated written comments in response to a draft standardization request of the European Commission to the European Standardization Organizations under the new Machinery Regulation. Several ASTM standards were highlighted in support of the essential requirements of the regulation.

In the same month, Sara Gobbi, director of EU affairs, presented at the 34th UNECE in Geneva, alongside member states and partner organizations including ISO, IEC, ANSI, UNIDO, ITU, WTO, and others.

The Brussels and Washington D.C. offices continue to engage with the NATO Standardization Office (NSO) with a view to exploring possible technical cooperation agreements with relevant tasking authorities.

In September, Sara Gobbi and D02.J officer Gurhan Andac presented on ASTM jet-fuel specifications and pathways to over 100 members of the ICAO Fuels Task Group.

Communications

Public/Media Relations

The department has issued 156 releases to date, with recent releases covering the latest section of the Standardization Impact Report; emerging technology commercialization activity; and several new partnerships. Media inquiries continue at a steady rate, on topics such as consumer products, petroleum, and cannabis testing.

Standards Impact Podcast

Downloads have now exceeded 4,000 across 14 episodes. Recent episodes have covered sports safety, the Exo Games, and aviation fuels. Remaining episodes in 2024 will cover advanced manufacturing, food safety, and toys.

Standardization News

The Sep/Oct print issue of SN covered digital supply chains, with the cover feature “Chain of Communication.” Jan/Feb will be the annual chair issue covering Cassy Robinson and the field of homeland security and security technology.

This summer, SN Online features – designed to provide readers with timely, web-friendly content – saw features on electric vehicle standards as well as forensic science.

ASTM’s social media followers remain at approximately 150,000, with LinkedIn and Instagram seeing the most substantial growth.

SmartBrief Newsletter

ASTM SmartBrief’s open rate jumped to 27.1% this summer. The newsletter remains a popular source of news and information for members and non-members alike.

Social media impressions across all social-media platforms rose to nearly 4 million (from 140K total followers) over the last 365 calendar days. That’s a 33% increase over the previous period.

Video

More short videos are being produced as reels, which have performed extremely well and have helped grow ASTM’s Instagram presence.

Digital Services

Progress continues with the modernization of ASTM’s web operations, with priority placed on content management systems, product information management, financial systems, and the internal MCS platform.

Sales and Marketing

Significant results have been seen in Compass Points sales, subscribers, and PTP sales.

Product Management has a considerable pipeline of projects and new products, including prototype work around use of AI tools within Compass.

“The Voice of the Customer” project is continuing and will be in production with Digital Services in the near future.

Marketing continues to work across the organization with every department, and has dramatically increased activity on microsites (language-specific websites) leading back to ASTM.org. ■