PARK BRIEFS
NEWS FROM AROUND THE AERIAL ADVENTURE INDUSTRY
involved in drafting the next revision to ANSI/ACCT 03.2019. Everyone’s point of view matters. That’s the only way to achieve a consensus standard and avoid a repeat of the most recent failure. • CHARTING A NEW COURSE FOR STANDARDS
The short version. For those who don’t like to read, the short version is this: Future standards will be developed with much greater input from a wide range of stake- holders early in the process. All stakeholders who will be impacted by the standard will be encouraged to take part in drafting revisions to the current standard, and their perspectives and viewpoints will be incorporated. That’s a significant change. In the past, ACCT’s proce- dures limited the number of draft writers to 10; ANSI encourages no limits on contributors, and recom- mends broad participation by all stakeholders who will be affected by the standard. Going forward, there could be dozens or hundreds of ACCT stakeholders who have a say in the sections that impact them. The APTF proposal also restates the role of the Con- sensus Group (CG). As is typical ANSI process, ACCT, as the Accredited Standards Developer, will oversee the draft-writing process. Draft-writing will likely be based with the Technical Information, Research, and Education (TIRE) Committee, as has been the case in the past. The role of the CG (which in the past had shared authority to set up task groups to help draft standards) will become that of providing a check and balance on the draft standard.
the Supreme Court, but one representative of the overall industry and not stacked to any particular point of view—the APTF proposal creates five stakeholder groups: producers, servicers, commercial operators, educational operators, and general interest. All groups have an equal say on a draft standard. The new groups would replace the current three, which are vendors, users, and general interest. Again, the aim is to ensure that future standards achieve consensus across all industry stakeholders. If any one group of stakeholders has an objection to a provision of a proposed standard, that objection must be resolved before the standard can gain “consensus” status. In another change, the role of resolving any negative comments on the draft will be shared by ACCT (in prac- tice, the Board and/or TIRE Committee) and the CG. There’s a lot more in this proposal, which the APTF re- fers to as a “redlined copy of ACCT’s current Accredited Procedures,” but that’s it in a nutshell. Next steps. Once the APTF completes its work, the revised procedures must be approved by the CG and by ANSI. Even if all goes smoothly, it will likely be late July, at the earliest, before the changes become final. And it could take longer.
By Rick Kahl
To prepare for a new attempt to update the ANSI/ACCT 2019 standard, the Association for Challenge Course Technology (ACCT) has been revising its procedures for drafting standards. And it presented its nearly-com- plete plan during an April 29 webinar. If the final plan is accepted—it must be approved by both the ACCT Consensus Group and the American National Stan- dards Institute (ANSI)—it could dramatically reform the way ACCT standards are developed. The April 29 presentation was rather complex and detailed. To better understand what it all means, API spoke with ACCT board members Michael R. Smith and Korey Hampton, both also members of the Accredited Procedures Task Force (APTF) that has been redefining the standards-writing process.
To achieve balance in the CG—think of a body like
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