Success for TEG: Butterfly Valve Draft Standard Reviewed

Published: 5th September 2016 | Issue 38 Share article:

The Technical Expert Group format has scored a significant success. The Butterfly Valve TEG under the leadership of Richard Higgs was created with the task of providing the BVAA comment on the draft revision of BS EN 593 Industrial valves—Metallic butterfly valve.

WG4 of CEN TC69 had prepared the revision. The BVAA received an advanced copy of the draft revision in June 2015. The draft was proposing significant changes to the standard, namely the inclusion of the triple-offset design, higher pressure designations and larger sizes. BVAA companies with an interest in butterfly valves were contacted and good interest was shown in forming a TEG to prepare comments on the draft. Two full day meetings of the TEG, held at Banbury in December 2015 and February 2016 , were necessary to complete the review of the draft and to prepare the BVAA comments.

The draft BS EN 593 was expected to be issued in early 2016 for formal public comment but was delayed until June partly because of the review by the CEN consultant. The draft standard was formally published for public comment BSI Document DPC: 16 / 30339483 DC and members of the Valve Working Group were notified by HOT SPOT on 2016-6-6 of this. They were also sent the BVAA comments that had been previously drafted by the TEG.

The final step in this stage of the process was to hold a meeting of PSE/18/3 to review all the UK comments on the draft. In practice only the BVAA comments were received by PSE/18/3. The meeting took place on 2016-6-28 and agreed the UK formal submission to CEN. The UK have made significant technical comment and therefore the UK vote is to reject the draft. Without the work of the Butterfly Valve TEG there would have been no UK comments on this draft and potentially a standard unacceptable to the UK could be approved by CEN members. It should always be remembered that the BSi default vote on all EN and ISO draft documents is Accept. BSi can only vote Reject, if the reject vote is supported by detailed technical comments.

There is still work to do. The UK comments will be discussed together with the comments from other countries by WG4 of TC69. Members of the Butterfly Valve TEG will attend that meeting to ensure that UK concerns are fully explained and that the final draft revision of EN meets BVAA and UK requirements.

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