This was a focus of my keynote speech & conversation with David Bell onstage at the IEC General meeting in Edinburgh last month
We have just come to expect that our engineering & digital systems are safe. But there is so much hidden work done by organisations such as the IEC, the world's leading organisation for standards in technology to ensure that they are. From protecting our electricity grid from cyber attacks to removing the bias from AI. The global standard developed by the IEC provides the foundations to ensure applications are robust, ethical and secure.
The IEC General meeting in Edinburgh convened more than 1,200 delegates from 90 countries, showing the scale of the international collaboration taking place. Friday's General Assembly provided the forum to share what had been achieved over the week and look to the future, with speeches from the IEC President Jo Cops and the Princess Royal.
It was a huge honour to be asked to provide a keynote at their General Assembly and share insights from the other side of the table. As a consumer of standards, an enabler of the adoption of standards at IAND and helping set the Innovation policies that shape the need for future standards too.
Are standards a systems challenge?
I shared reflections on three key systems that are changing, where standards play a critical role & where there is the opportunity to leverage innovation and productivity growth.
1 The innovation ecosystem & the organisations that connect emerging companies.
2 The way cities are changing, from how people use them, to the adoption of smart in cities.
3 The supplier ecosystem, and the changes in how we leverage procurement to drive change.
One of the key challenges is the interconnected nature of the standards that underpin our infrastructure projects & capital delivery. They span the business standards that govern how to run projects, to the standards for the each of the technologies that will be used.
Collaboration between companies is growing, responding to the need to access new skills & work with more local small & medium enterprises (SMEs). At IAND I see the complexity first hand with the need to meet standards themselves, and ensure their supply chain complies with standards too.
Procurement is a key lever to support the growth of smaller companies across the UK. In sectors such as infrastructure, accessing the expertise from SMEs is key. With 51% of jobs in Architecture & Engineering in SMEs this talent is critical to delivering new investments in Capital schemes to ensure all the talent in the sector can be leveraged and help support jobs & the growth of businesses across the UK.
Making sure standards are SME friendly, simple & easy to use is critical to improving both productivity & the adoption of standards. Helping companies engage with standards earlier in their growth. After all the SMEs now are the PLCs of the future.
As standards are the enabling infrastructure - the engineering of business - sometimes hidden from view but critical for our safety. Having the opportunity to meet the people behind the standards, and the power of the global network, gave me confidence that with the rise of AI & new technologies that there are brilliant people thinking through the risk & opportunities. Helping all of us navigate these new exciting & changing times.