Adventure Park Insider—Boulder, Colo., July 10, 2024—The Association for Challenge Course Technology (ACCT) was accepted as the technical liaison to the International Standards Organization’s (ISO) “adventure tourism” subcommittee. The subcommittee, WG7, is developing a new aerial adventure industry standard, and the ANSI/ACCT 2019 Standard will form part of the basis for the new international draft standard.
As the technical liaison to the committee, ACCT has a proverbial seat at the table, said ACCT board chair Korey Hampton, such that the organization hopes contributions from ACCT will influence the development of a new ISO standard that “will harmonize with existing standards and make our industry better, safer, and more aligned for all of our members and their participants around the globe.
“Our hope is that there will be significant overlap between the ISO standards and ACCT standards and that the two will be complementary,” said Hampton.
ACCT’s standards were accepted by the ISO working group during the annual ISO / Technical Committee 228 meetings held in June in Marseille, France, where Hampton served as the in-person representative for ACCT. ACCT executive director Melissa Webb and TIRE Committee member Rich Klajnscek also virtually participated in a meeting.
Participation in the ISO standards writing process “brings exposure and credibility to ACCT and helps to ensure that ACCT’s standards are globally recognized,” said Hampton. Additionally, as ACCT looks to improve its own standards development procedures, “working with the ISO committee is an opportunity to learn from other standards writers about their standards development process,” she said.
As the technical expert, ACCT will work with the subcommittee over the next few years to develop an ISO standard for the aerial adventure industry. In addition to determining which standards would form the basis for the project, the subcommittee also drafted a scope statement for the ISO standard during the June meetings.
ISO is composed entirely of representatives from national standards writing groups. It is a non-government organization that was formed in 1947 to provide a neutral platform to bring world experts together to develop and agree on standards. It published its first adventure tourism standard in 2014.
For more on ISO, see “The Standards You Should Know” (API, Spring / Summer 2024).
For more on revisions to the ACCT standards development procedures, see “Charting a New Course for Standards” (API, Spring / Summer 2024).
