November 2010 Newsletter
Dear IFRTT Forum subscriber,
During the first week of November I spent a most enjoyable week in Berlin (what a majestic and interesting city!) attending the 5th meeting of the ISO/PC 241 committee, which had the task of reviewing the comments on Committee Draft 2 of ISO 39001, Road Traffic Safety Management Systems. This is a new ISO standard (due to be published by early 2013) that will be relevant to all organisations that have an impact on road safety. This includes road authorities (planners, designers and operators), vehicle manufacturers, consignors (shippers), consignees (receivers of freight), freight and passenger transport operators and emergency response organisations. As in the case of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, the standard is generic, and organisations will be responsible for identifying and monitoring their own intermediate safety outcome factors in addition to the final safety outcome factors (deaths and serious injuries). The Editorial Committee is now busy preparing Committee Draft 3, which will be distributed to Participating and Observing member countries as well as liaison organisations (including the GRSP, World Bank and OECD) during January 2011 for further comments.
Mårten Johansson, one of our Board Members, also attended the meeting in Berlin and after some discussion, we felt that it would be worthwhile for the IFRTT to become a liaison organisation. This would allow Forum members to submit formal comments on ISO CD3 39001 as well as the DIS (Draft International Standard), which will be circulated for comment during the latter half of 2011. As a result of overwhelming support from the IFRTT Board, I have submitted a request to the ISO/PC 241 Secretariat for the IFRTT to become a liaison organisation. For those of you who are interested, I have attached a presentation on the development of this new standard and the activities of ISO/PC 241 in Berlin. Some of the slides are courtesy of Claes Tingvall, chairman of the committee or Peter Hartzell, the secretary.
The night before I left Berlin, I had a most enjoyable dinner with Klaus-Peter Glaeser, one of our Board Members, and his wife in trendy area of Prenzlauer Berg. He also gave me a guided tour of what was West Berlin, as I had spent most of the week in the old East Berlin.
On the home front, South Africa has made another step forward in its “Smart Truck” initiative with the commissioning of 9 (identical) PBS vehicles in the forestry industry. These consist of Scania R500 8×4 rigid trucks with a 5-axle drawbar trailer – see attached photos. The overall length is 25.1 m, combination mass is 70 tons and payload approximately 50,8 tons.
Weather-wise, we are well into summer; in fact this year we seemed to spring straight from winter to summer, with little time to acclimatise to the South African summer heat. Fortunately the rains have started in earnest although parts of the country are still suffering from drought and serious water shortages.
Kind regards and drive safely
Paul Nordengen
