TB said:

BSI knowledgebase seem to only have an out of date version

That's slightly odd, as the easy answer is that, afaik, in the UK BSI is actually the only legitimate source of IEC or EN (or of course BS) standards. Which standard was that?

There are standards database services which give you access to the BSI standards, but there's a hefty annual fee for those. Unsurprising as the database service needs to make a profit and they're still paying BSI which has to cover its costs.

Andy

Thanks, I had a feeling this would be the 'best' place to get hold of them as it did look the most official.

BS EN 61439 was what seemed to have a couple parts listed as withdrawn and nothing new listed.

But I've just solved my own issue by searching for 'IEC...' not 'BS EN...' and the current versions have appeard.

Seems that getting your hear around the system to access standards is just as much fun as getting your head around the standard itself!

Be aware that many of the English Language version of the EN standards are actually far cheaper not from the BSI, but from the equivalent bodies in other European countries. This does lead to a cover page in Slovakian or whatever but the main document text is still in English, the problem is that it is complex and the cheapest country for one standard is not necessarily the cheapest for another... It is also vital not to get the home language version unless you are very fluent.

Seems that getting your hear around the system to access standards is just as much fun as getting your head around the standard itself!

indeed so, there are folk who do nothing else but get hold of the right copies of standards for a living..

Mike.

mapj1 said:

there are folk who do nothing else but get hold of the right copies of standards for a living..

Quite - that does feel like my job description sometimes! 

The whole area is difficult, we've done entire projects where all we've done is to work out for clients which standards they should comply to, and then work out how they can show compliance to them. But it's all judgement and experience, I recently had a client come back on some work we did for them a year or two back asking where it was stated that they had to comply to certain standards - and the answer, as usual, was that it just came from our risk assessment. They didn't have to comply with them if they didn't want to, but if there was an accident or incident the prosecution could ask why they hadn't complied to the known "best practice" in the standard. Which is fine if you know that random standard happens to exist in the first place...

I guess that the CE / UKCA marking approach of having a list of harmonised standards which you can choose (or not) to pick from to show conformity is probably about the best approach we can get between either mandating standards that may be inappropriate to a particular system in practice or just having a complete free for all. But those harmonised lists are so big now that just finding your way around them is difficult - and (back to the point) for someone like TB it then leads to the problem that without access to all the standards you can't even read the scope to see if they are the one you are looking for.

At least when I'm having a bad day at work it's one of those issues that makes me feel that I can do something which is actually useful to someone! (P.S. given the email I recently received about community guidelines, this isn't a sales pitch - TB's panels aren't in my field.) But I do wish there were more guidelines for individual industries to allow clients to do it for themselves. 

The IET Library offers access to BSI Online freely to members if you can get there… if you have a specific item to research, a list of possible standards and time you might find it worth the trip.

Some local council libraries, also have access (often only from the bigger branches)but sadly the number of councils able to afford it is dwindling.

Obviously as a start-up, budgets are big consideration,

I'm not sure if it's still the case but BSI used to offer "membership" which for an annual fee gave you something like a 50% discount on most standards (just about everything except BS 7671 as I recall) - which if you needed access to a few standards could easily pay for itself. There's probably something similar for electronic access these days.

   - Andy.

Yes they do, I've just checked and it's currently £213 for a sole trader or small low turnover company. So worth if it you'll need access to anything more than two standards per year.

https://knowledge.bsigroup.com/membership

Thanks and just to add to this you no longer have to visit the library as we can provide access to standards within the eight modules of BSI that we subscribe to as PDFs via email. If you email libdesk@theiet.org with your membership number and the references of the standards you are interested in we can hopefully supply. We are also trialing read only remote access (so you can read but not download standards from our subscribed modules at home). Please get in touch via the libdesk email address if either of these are of interest. Daniel (IET Library)

Many thanks DanielSimkin , that's very good news. When you say "the eight modules of BSI that we subscribe to" can you clarify what this means to save us bothering you with unfulfillable requests?

Thanks,

Andy

Hi Andy, the modules are GBM 14: Manufacturing Engineering, GBM 17: Electrical Engineering In General , GBM 18: Electrical Components, GBM 19:Electrical Accessories, Switchgear & Control gear, GBM 20: Electric Lamps, Power Generation, Distribution & Storage, GBM 23: Telecommunication, GBM 24: Information Technology - Software & Networking, GBM 50: Building Installations & Finishing.  

In most cases what we have available to us is the BS EN versions. We can also borrow printed standards from the IMechE via our reciprocal arrangement and we have a small collection of older standards in print so do feel free to send any request as we can sometimes fulfil beyond our BSI subscription.