Ian Richardson

During the recent BSIF Board meeting, which I attended, the topic of PPE and technology came up. Lots of words have been used to describe the changing face of modern protective equipment – ‘Smart’, ‘Innovative’ and ‘Intelligent’ being just a few of them. The discussion went on to mention a recent workshop organised by the CEN/CENELEC (the European Standards bodies) Sector Forum for Personal Protective Equipment, which wanted to begin looking at the potential for European Standards to cover ‘Smart garments and equipment’.

Naturally, the first item on the workshop agenda was entitled: “Smart garments, textiles or equipment: what does that mean?”

The conclusions from the workshop were that more consultation was necessary, and the feedback I’ve received is that in the UK the view may be that it is too early to consider a wide ranging standards development programme for Smart PPE (if that’s what we end up calling it!). However, since there has been a Standardization Request issued from the EC, in relation to ‘smart textiles’, it is almost certain that standards will be developed over the next few years. CEN/CENELEC are therefore consulting on a way forward, and would like to identify possible standardization work in the field of Smart Garments and Equipment.

Some questions have been posed, for which it is clearly a priority for BSI to get feedback from the UK industry, including questions such as whether it would be useful to organize a workshop on standardization for smart PPE in the future, what is the most important product or part of product to be standardized in terms of “smart textiles”? (e.g. active high visible clothing, body monitoring systems, connections/batteries/plugs, radio transmission) and how much interest is there in participating in future standardization work in the field of PPE? (e.g. weather, chemicals, fire fighters, sports).

Working with the BSIF, and other associations and organisations represented on our PPE Technical Committees, BSI will be looking to get a more in depth picture of the UK’s view on standardisation in this emerging field. If you have comments you believe will help build this picture, or would like to get involved more, please feel free to get in touch with me.

Ian Richardson, board director, BSIF & standards publishing manager, BSI

ian.richardson@bsigroup.com