NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 75

August, another six combined standards
will be issued in 2022 and 2023. That
will be followed by four more standards
in 2023, six in 2024, and eight final combined standards in 2025 and 2026.

A LEARNING PROCESS
While there are significant long-term
benefits to consolidation, the process of
combining multiple related standards,
each with its own group of technical
experts, has presented some logistical
questions. Should the content of the
separate documents be fully merged
and reimagined? Should the technical
committees also merge? If not, how
would conflicting opinions be handled?
In the end, NFPA opted to keep
things simple. Each former standard
subject to consolidation will start
as a standalone section of the new
combined document, with individual technical committees remaining
separate and in charge of their own
material. Each committee is then free
to streamline, combine, and reorganized their material as they see fit. The
approach works because " nine times
out of 10, one section doesn't cross over
into the other material in the document, " Holland said. " The committees
understand where their guardrails are,
and where the material they're responsible for starts and ends. "

There have been a few tricky spots,
however. For one, each standard has
three introductory chapters: Administration, Reference Documents, and
Definitions. One of the technical committees is responsible for merging these
chapters from the separate documents
into one. In some instances, the same
term is defined with slight variations
across documents. In other places,
there may be minor contradictions
or redundancies between sections, as
with the emergency lighting issue in
NFPA 1900. In that case, the committees involved formed a task group to
work on the issue, and over the course
of many hours hashed out a common
standard for emergency lighting that
can apply to each of the vehicles covered in the standard. The end result is
a cleaner document that is also more
user-friendly.
" Overall, the committee members
have been amicable and open to this
whole process. When things do come
up, it's just working and trying to find
a solution, " Holland said. " In instances
where we have multiple definitions for
the same thing, it's just, 'OK, what's the
best one?' We can't have three definitions for a tire. It's about talking it out
and landing on one solution. "
Chase and Holland admit that, at
first, there was some apprehension from

FIRST BATCH

NFPA's five-year consolidation of emergency responder
standards will reduce more than 90 existing standards to 29. Here are the first five
consolidated standards, all 2022 editions expected to be issued in August.
New standard 	 			
Combines
NFPA 470, Hazardous Materials/Weapons
NFPA 472, NFPA 473, NFPA 1072
of Mass Destruction (WMD) Standards for
Responders
New standard 	
NFPA 1140, Standards for Wildland Fire
Protection

Combines
NFPA 1051, NFPA 1141, NFPA 1143,
NFPA 1144

New standard 	
NFPA 1225, Standards for Emergency
Services Communications

Combines
NFPA 1061, NFPA 1221

New standard 	
NFPA 1990, Standards for Protective
Ensembles for Hazardous Materials and
CBRN Operations

Combines	
		
NFPA 1991, NFPA 1992, NFPA 1994

New standard 	
NFPA 2500, Standards for Operations
and Training for Technical Search and
Rescue Incidents and Life Safety Rope and
Equipment for Emergency Services

Combines
NFPA 1670, NFPA 1983, NFPA 1858

committee members about what the consolidation changes might mean and how
the process might work. But as the draft
meetings of this first group of standards
has played out, many of those fears
have lifted and the benefits of this new
approach have become clear.
" Once they start seeing the documents
come together, they start to believe in
some of the synergy, " Chase said. He
cited a new proposed consolidated document, NFPA 470, Hazardous Materials/
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
Standard for Responders, which brought
three standards into one document. The
committee, he said, combined and consolidated the professional qualification
requirements and competencies, which
were previously in different standards,
and reordered the chapters in a way that
made more sense. " Committee members
quickly became believers, but it took
them actually going through this process
to see those benefits, " Chase said. " Now
we're also starting to see some of that
with the documents in group two, which
have finished their first-draft meetings.
They're starting to see how bringing
together these different standards
can make for a more comprehensive
approach rather than having a different
book for each portion of the same topic. "
Ultimately, the biggest promise of the
consolidation is when users of the standards see that same synergy, Holland
said. Currently, a single topic like wildland firefighting is spread across four
documents to cover different aspects
of fire management, land development, and professional qualifications.
Within months, though, jurisdictions
in wildfire-prone areas will only need
one book: NFPA 1140, Standards for
Wildland Fire Protection. The same will
soon be the case for topics including
personal protective equipment, technical search and rescue, mass evacuation,
and many more.
" That was the really the main driving
force to consolidate the documents, " Holland said. " What can we do that is going
to provide the biggest benefit to the end
user? I think having one book for each
topic instead of several is going to make
things a lot easier. "
JESSE ROMAN is associate editor at NFPA Journal.

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