Adventure Park Insider Magazine—Longmont, Colo., April 25, 2024—Want to make sure the ANSI/ACCT Standard serves the needs of the industry and its customers? If so, be sure to attend the upcoming virtual meeting on the Accredited Procedures (AP) that will guide the next draft of the ANSI/ACCT Standard. This virtual meeting takes place April 29, 2024, from 3:30-5:30 p.m. MDT (5:30-7:30 p.m. EDT, 2:30-4:30 p.m. PDT). 
The Accredited Procedures Task Force will share its process and where its draft document stands—which could be ready for approval “via the process outlined in the AP and within ANSI,” according to a statement from ACCT. Register for the meeting here.
ACCT formed the Accredited Procedures Task Force to overhaul the process of drafting the next revision of the Standard following the failure of the last attempt. Task Force members Leslie Sohl (chair), Korey Hampton, John Lazarus, Lynda Kelly, Melissa Webb, Mike Smith, Rohan Shahani, John Winter, and John Voegtlin have been working to avoid a repeat of that result.
At a session during the ACCT annual conference in Oklahoma City in February, Sohl said the Task Force aimed to better align ACCT’s procedures with ANSI requirements. That includes a balance of inputs to the standards during development. The previous draft standard failed in part because some new sections of the draft were crafted by only a few individuals, without the broad input needed to achieve an industry consensus.
Therefore, a key goal is to get more and broader input earlier during the standard development, not after the draft is done.
A related goal is to achieve better balance among the draftees. To achieve consensus, it will be essential to involve a broad and diverse set of participants in the actual drafting.
To ensure that diversity, Sohl said the group was looking to achieve balance across five categories: vender producers, vendor servicers, commercial operators, educational operators, and general interest. The aim is to give everyone a “home” so they can see where they fit in.
The last draft standard attempted to achieve balance across three categories, producers (builders), users (operators), and general (everyone else). In practice, though, there were few people involved, with operators particularly underrepresented.
It will likely take serious effort to recruit more participants, especially commercial and educational operators, to the drafting process. To make it easier for people to contribute, ACCT executive director and Task Force member Melissa Webb said she hoped to make the standards process easier for people to understand, as that would help them see when and where to engage.
How well has the Task Force succeeded? Industry members should attend this virtual meeting to find out. It’s the first step on the path to a more palatable standard.
