U.S., Canadian Standards Process Progresses

Steady progress continues on the effort to harmonize U.S. and Canadian RV standards with the CSA Z240 Technical Committee holding what is hoped to be the last in series of meetings dating back to March 2012 to update and synchronize CSA Z240 with NFPA 1192.

According to a press release, the meeting resulted in a unanimous vote to approve all proposed changes agreed upon during the previous meetings. CSA will now format the draft 2014 edition of CSA Z240 and then issue a 60-day public review period. There may be a need to hold one last meeting, tentatively scheduled for early September/October, to process any submitted public comments.

The harmonization plan agreed to by an ad hoc group composed of members from the CSA Z240 Technical Committee and the NFPA Technical Committee on RVs is to “synchronize” as much as possible within the two standards for the respective 2014 editions.

The current CSA Z240 code cycle schedule targets early 2014 for publication and the NFPA 1192 code cycle has the 2014 edition ready for publication in late 2013. The approach also includes identifying those requirements that cannot be synchronized and then conducting the necessary research and lobbying in order to secure desired changes for 2017.

The final goal is to “harmonize” the two documents for the 2017 editions. The vision is to have the two documents published under a single cover that will have both the CSA Z240 and the NFPA 1192 identifications.

Progress Made to Blend U.S., Canada Standards

The Recreation Vehicle Industry Association’s (RVIA) Standards Department is reporting that efforts to harmonize the United States’ NFPA 1192 RV standard and Canada’s CSA Z240 RV standard are progressing toward a uniform approach.

According to a press release, a joint ad hoc committee held its inaugural meeting March 13-14 at CSA’s headquarters in Mississauga, Ontario to begin the process of identifying issues that need to be changed to initiate harmonization. Members of the NFPA Technical Committee on RVs and the CSA Z240 Technical Committee were named by the respective chairmen of these two groups.

Over 50 code change proposals were developed for the CSA Z240 RV standard and 13 proposals were drafted for the 2014 edition of NFPA 1192. These draft proposals will now be forwarded to the respective full committees for review and action. The NFPA Technical Committee on RVs will be meeting in May and the CSA Z240 Technical Committee is planning to meet in September.

The development of the ad hoc committee followed an RVIA-initiated meeting in October 2011 in Boston between CSA and NFPA to begin harmonization discussions. Both organizations indicated that the development of a single set of requirements that would apply to all North American RVs could be beneficial to the North American RV industry.

“The first effort in a formalized harmonization is not likely to result in a single document with both designations. Instead, the harmonized requirements would be published in the 2014 editions of each standard. Hopefully a single CSA/NFPA document with both designations could be considered for the next cycle in 2017,” said RVIA Vice President of Standards and Education Bruce Hopkins.

Hopkins noted that several RVIA members were key in the effort, including: Jeff Christner, Forest River Inc.; Terry Elias, Triple E RV; Peter Gildenstem, Intertek; Jerome Hoover, Monaco RV LLC; and David Mihalick, Thor Industries Inc.