VOICES | HYWEL DAVIES The end of the beginning The UK may have left the EU, but it still remains a key participant in the European Standards system, says Hywel Davies B y the time you read this, the UK will have left the European Union and started engaging in international trade negotiations with the United States and our former EU colleagues. But what might this mean for the building services sector? At 11pm GMT on 31 January, an unprecedented period of turbulence and controversy in British political history formally ended, when the UK left the EU after 48 years. It concluded three and half years of discord. After the rout of General Rommel at El Alamein in 1942, Prime Minister Winston Churchill said: This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. And so with Brexit. After more than three years of conflict, the UK is now an independent, sovereign state, where a democratic choice has been implemented but we still believe in, and are part of, a rules-based international system of global trade governed by bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. Outside the EU, we are now free to negotiate a trade deal with the US and it would be mad not to do so, given the size of the US market, the historical links between the two countries and the bond between the English-speaking peoples. But there are real differences. The UK joined the European Economic Community nearly 200 years after the United States won independence from us. Americans now seem greatly attracted to our monarchy, but they are a republic with an elected head of state, and the present incumbent is particularly committed to doing deals that put America first and make America great again. In the world of building services, ASHRAE is one of the leading US bodies, and one of just six US standardsdeveloping organisations that can self-certify its standards against the procedural rules of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Its consensus-based standards-development process aims to be rigorous, transparent, balanced and robust, with participation from a range of relevant stakeholders who may not be ASHRAE members. ASHRAE is the premier publisher of standards for many building services products and systems in North America, and is currently pressing hard for the adoption, by the US Department of Energy (DOE), of a formal rule that would direct DOE to adopt ASHRAE technical standards and test procedures under the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995. The UK has hitherto been a part of the European Single Market, with a system of regulations and The UK is no longer in the EU, but remains a key participant in the European standards body, CEN, which is not an EU institution DR HYWEL DAVIES is technical director at CIBSE www.cibse.org 18 February 2020 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Feb20 pp18-19 Hywel Davies.indd 18 24/01/2020 14:49