Standard Processes Manual

Standards Committee

Status:
Approved by the NERC Board of Trustees on December 16, 2010.

Purpose/Industry Need:
During its January 2010 meeting, the NERC Standards Committee approved posting for industry comment a new NERC Standard Processes Manual (Manual).  The draft Manual is the product of three parallel efforts to improve NERC’s standards development processes:

• Industry stakeholders submitted numerous comments during the development of the Three-year Performance Assessment, indicating the need for improvements to the standards processes, that would improve standards quality, reduce standards development time, reduce resource burdens on the industry to review and comment on draft standards, and improve the overall quality of NERC standards. 

• The Standards Committee and its Process Subcommittee have been working on ideas to improve the effectiveness and speed of standards development while respecting NERC and American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards development principles.

•  NERC’s Ad Hoc Group for Results-based Reliability Standards submitted a preliminary report to the NERC Board of Trustees in November 2009 that highlighted the need to provide guidance to standards drafting teams and better “quality” control over the development of reliability standards.

In response to the Three-year Performance Assessment, a review by NERC staff and a member of the Standards Committee’s Process Subcommittee was conducted to compare NERC’s standards development process against ANSI’s requirements for standards accreditation, and to compare NERC’s standards development process against three other ANSI-accredited standards developers.  The work of all these efforts was merged by NERC staff and combined into a new “Standard Processes Manual” that is intended to replace the “Reliability Standards Development Procedure Version 7” manual in its entirety.

The proposed manual is intended to result in improvements to the standards processes by making more efficient use of limited resources while improving the quality of standards and maintaining ANSI accreditation of the standards process. 

To assist you in the review, the following documents have been posted:

• ANSI Essential Requirements: Due process requirements for American National Standards

• Table comparing ANSI’s Essential Requirements for accreditation as a standards developer against three other ANSI-accredited standards development processes, NERC’s last board-approved version of the Reliability Standards Development Procedure (RSDP), and the proposed Standard Processes Manual (SPM)

• Reliability Standards Development Procedure Version 7

• Standard Processes Manual