Have Your Say
Karen Hall, National Hydrogen Association

The NHA is actively involved in a number of national and international code and standard development activities. NHA staff and Codes & Standards Steering Committee members are voting members of several Technical Committees and Working Groups. Therefore, there are many opportunities for interested parties to provide input on documents, even if you do not hold a seat on the applicable committee.

There are several feedback options presented in the Safety Report. For example, the ISO updates, as well as other Standard Development Organization update articles, often describe documents out for review and voting. We describe the document and timeframe, and ask any interested party to let us know if they want a review copy, and when we need the input for inclusion in the NHA response. Staff members represent the NHA on several Technical Committees, so comments received by NHA members will be included in our response. In the event that comments indicate an item is controversial and there is no NHA consensus, we will abstain and forward feedback received, as NHA comments. Feedback from non-NHA members is also welcome. We will do what we can to point you in the appropriate direction to have your comments considered. In some cases this may be through your national Technical Advisory Group, or to a committee Chair.

The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Safety Report also publishes the minutes of monthly teleconferences and In-Person meetings of the National Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Codes & Standards Coordinating Committee. If you would like to present an issue for broad discussion, consider putting the item forward on the agenda for this meeting. You can send such items to me or Russ Hewett at NREL.

There are also times when the timing of the NHA C&S Steering Committee telecons corresponds to input timeframes for documents. In this case those topics are on the agenda and NHA staff collects verbal and written input. Again, if you would like to present an issue for broad discussion, consider putting the item forward on the agenda for this meeting.

Also, you will see a number of resources on the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Safety Report website. Unfortunately, it isn’t always possible to publish an article on each draft code or standard that is out for comment; however the NHA wants to make sure all interested stakeholders are aware of the documents, particularly when they are out for comment or vote. To achieve this, we work closely with Kelvin Hecht (see www.fuelcellstandards.com) to provide an updated list of codes ands standards that are out for Review. From the main page of the website (www.hydrogenandfuelcellsafety.info), on the left under "Committee Resources," you will see a tab labelled "Documents for Review." Clicking here takes you to a page to specify whether you want to see the US National documents (such as NFPA, ICC, or other national efforts) or International Documents (such as ISO TC 197and IEC TC 105). You could also search by keyword from the Archives page, if you are looking for anything published in the Safety Report about a particular technology.

The point is that if you have a particular interest in a document, please let us know. If you have comments about a document out for review or vote, again, please let us know. NHA staff will take these comments into consideration when providing the NHA comments or vote on a document. We will be able to reflect your concerns/views/issues if you share them with us. And we are happy to do this through NHA comments, with or without attribution to your organization, as you request.