Outstandng 18th Oddities

Hi Andy I have just thought of an anommly, the 18th edition was the first DPC since the Internet started where the P did not stand for public, only those signed in members of the BSI website could view the draft. It made public comment very limited compared to previous publications

I agree with Graham on that point - I'm not a member of the BSI but I had little difficulty submitting quite a list of comments on the 18th DPC. Yes, there's the hoop to jump though to register on the web site - but I don't recall that being at all difficult - and nothing you wouldn't expect on any other web site where you submitted comments.


There was the hiccup with the new BSI system struggling to cope with the shear size of BS 7671 and the eventually the whole thing being made available as a PDF (which I can understand the BSI and IET being uncomfortable with from a copyright point of view), but we got there in the end. For me the bit about the new process I don't like is not being able to readily keep a copy of all my responses (for future reference) without a lot of tedious copying & pasting.


I do think the DPC process does have some value. Remember Part 8 (energy efficiency) in the DPC? - which has so many things the designer had to 'take into consideration' that the process would add a huge amount of time to the simplest design and even then it would be entirely unclear whether the design actually met the requirements of BS 7671 or not. As far as I can tell, without all the negative comments on the DPC it would have remained a fundamental part of the regulations - rather than having being kicked into the long grass of appendix 17 where it can be safely ignored by most of us. I've noticed quite a few other changes that seem to have been the result of DPC comments over the years too.


What would be nice though is some kind of feedback about why comments were apparently ignored (as some quite sensible sounding ones seem to have been - one of the advantages of the new BSI system is that you can see other people's comments as well as your own). Was it because the commenter had fundamentally mis-understood what the regulation was trying to achieve (in which case a clarification of the wording might be in order?) or did the committee basically agree but felt their hands were tied (e.g. in order to maintain compatibility with say IEC standards), or were unsure of the consequences of making the change (as it's been there for so many years no-one can remember the original problem it was meant to address) or was it a good point but the knock-on consequences would have been so wide ranging that there wasn't time to make the changes under the current edition but it might be considered in later major revisions.


  - Andy.

Hi Andy I have just thought of an anommly, the 18th edition was the first DPC since the Internet started where the P did not stand for public, only those signed in members of the BSI website could view the draft. It made public comment very limited compared to previous publications

I agree with Graham on that point - I'm not a member of the BSI but I had little difficulty submitting quite a list of comments on the 18th DPC. Yes, there's the hoop to jump though to register on the web site - but I don't recall that being at all difficult - and nothing you wouldn't expect on any other web site where you submitted comments.


There was the hiccup with the new BSI system struggling to cope with the shear size of BS 7671 and the eventually the whole thing being made available as a PDF (which I can understand the BSI and IET being uncomfortable with from a copyright point of view), but we got there in the end. For me the bit about the new process I don't like is not being able to readily keep a copy of all my responses (for future reference) without a lot of tedious copying & pasting.


I do think the DPC process does have some value. Remember Part 8 (energy efficiency) in the DPC? - which has so many things the designer had to 'take into consideration' that the process would add a huge amount of time to the simplest design and even then it would be entirely unclear whether the design actually met the requirements of BS 7671 or not. As far as I can tell, without all the negative comments on the DPC it would have remained a fundamental part of the regulations - rather than having being kicked into the long grass of appendix 17 where it can be safely ignored by most of us. I've noticed quite a few other changes that seem to have been the result of DPC comments over the years too.


What would be nice though is some kind of feedback about why comments were apparently ignored (as some quite sensible sounding ones seem to have been - one of the advantages of the new BSI system is that you can see other people's comments as well as your own). Was it because the commenter had fundamentally mis-understood what the regulation was trying to achieve (in which case a clarification of the wording might be in order?) or did the committee basically agree but felt their hands were tied (e.g. in order to maintain compatibility with say IEC standards), or were unsure of the consequences of making the change (as it's been there for so many years no-one can remember the original problem it was meant to address) or was it a good point but the knock-on consequences would have been so wide ranging that there wasn't time to make the changes under the current edition but it might be considered in later major revisions.


  - Andy.