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BS / BS EN / EN / BS IEC / IEC confusion

Chris Bailey

Interested in peoples approach to applying standards to designs. We have an international design team where I have always promoted the use of BS versions of IEC or EN for projects in the UK. Others are happy to simply state and EN or IEC standard.

Im am wondering if there would ever be any discrepancies between them and is it lazy using a international standard rather than the BS version? Or am I being unnecessarily pedantic.

The subject I am dealing with now is cable specifications and I am uncomfortable with IEC standard being loosely used, where i feel we should be specific and use BS equivalent. 

Any thoughts would be helpful

Regards

Parents
  • 0

    Hi Alasdair,

    Thank you for taking the time to respond, the information was very helpful. I shall share this back to the engineering team.

    Following Brexit ,do you see this process changing ?

    Also can you recommend any good books for some more background reading ? 

    Regards

    Chris

  • 0 in reply to Chris Bailey
    Chris Bailey said:

    Following Brexit ,do you see this process changing ?

    Many of the EN standards that we use are CENELEC standards, and the UK is still part of CENELEC, so for those you would expect to see no change. CENELEC standards are very clearly identified as such. The same for goes CEN standards. I can't actually think offhand of an EN standard I've come across in the day job that hasn't been from one of these two organisations. Of course in time we may see more BS standards generated separately, although personally I think this is unlikely at the moment.

    Apologies for quoting Wikipedia, but actually these are very good articles!

    CENELEC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Committee_for_Electrotechnical_Standardization

    CEN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Committee_for_Standardization

    Thanks,

    Andy

Reply Children
  • 0 in reply to Andy Millar

    The two bodies (CEN and CENELEC) along with ETSI for telecommunications standards are the only ones that can produce EN standards as they are the European equivalents of ISO and IEC producing non-electrical standards and electrical standards respectively. BSI are eager to remain part of CENELEC (and presumably CEN) and CENELEC are eager for BSI to do so. The only problem when I last looked into it was that to be a member a country needed to be part of the EU or part of the EEA, but the intention was that the Rules would be amended to try to permit UK to remain a member.

  • 0 in reply to Alasdair Anderson

    Thanks Alasdair, I really really ought to know this! Some bedtime reading for me sometime...as the OP says, the challenge is to find out where!

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