CELEBRATING 125 YEARS OF ASME CODES & STANDARDS

WORLD WIDE CONNECTOR
By Jon Labrador

Greater international participation in code activities, maximizing contributions from existing volunteer resources, increased effectiveness in internal operations, and an increased efficiency in all areas of ASME Codes and Standards were the key themes during ASME’s redesign effort in the late ’90s. In an era when companies in every industry were looking to do more with less, the practical solution was the use of electronic communication methods and the World Wide Web to make that happen. C&S Connect became the solution for ASME Codes and Standards.

C&S Connect was developed as an online application that would electronically manage all areas of the codes and standards committee process. Development began on a small scale in 1998 with the construction of an internal staff database used to manage the committee process for ASME’s largest set of committees: the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Committees. Work picked up again in 2000 when a major effort was launched to expand the internal application and develop a Web-based tool that extended access to thousands of codes and standards volunteers. The resulting first version of C&S Connect was successfully launched in 2001 to very little fanfare.

The results of integrating C&S Connect into all code activities were dramatic.

In terms of information distribution, gone were the days of 1,200-page committee minutes held together by special five-inch Chicago screws and distributed via mail to hundreds of committee volunteers. Gone were the days when ASME staff would distribute thousands of committee ballots, so volunteers could mail the same number back to ASME headquarters. Gone also were the days when volunteers and staff would wait and wait for actions to be distributed or meetings to take place in order to move forward with the committee process. C&S Connect replaced all of this with seamless, uninterrupted electronic delivery of all committee information as it happened.

C&S Connect changed the tone, structure, and purpose of code meetings. Where meetings used to center around the distribution of minutes or agendas that contained material that was at best a few months old, they can now center around up-to-the-minute data accessed wirelessly by committee members. In some cases, face-to-face meetings were dropped in lieu of Web conferences that used areas of C&S Connect as the medium for committee discussions. In many cases, C&S Connect maximized efficiency of discussions at meetings  as more complicated or controversial actions were resolved online before meetings even took place.

C&S Connect is now the center of committee-related activities and is essential to both the day-to-day work and the strategic growth of ASME’s codes and standards activities. In many ways, C&S Connect now represents the equivalent to Facebook for ASME’s codes and standards community, where users go to interact and communicate with their associates on a daily basis.

Today, C&S Connect is a work in progress that changes as our processes and procedures change and as new technological methods are discovered that can help increase efficiency and usability of the service for all of its users.

Goals for the future include:

• Incorporating ASME’s entire conformity assessment process into the system.

• Dramatically increasing usability through wholesale changes to the design and “look and feel” of the Web site.

• Granting many more users capabilities to create and update committee actions without an intermediary.

• Making greater flexibility and customization possible through the development of a “My Accounts” page.

At present users can expect yearly revisions of the product intended to make it a more powerful tool and provide ever-more-efficient communication among standards developers around the world.   

Built on the principle that all code-related activities and the work involved in managing these activities should be processed electronically, the latest version of C&S Connect allows both staff and volunteers to: + Retrieve information instantaneously. + Receive timely auto-notification of results and immediately act on them. + Distribute work immediately to all involved in the activity. + Communicate with colleagues and staff any time, anywhere in the world. + Access committee work any time, anywhere around the globe. + Process nearly all committee work electronically.

Jon Labrador, process management and technology director at ASME Codes and Standards, is responsible for development, operations management, and training for codes and standards electronic tools.