Dave Conway - A Safer Place for all Road Users

Dave Conway is back with another blog, detailing his continued support to the working group that created, implemented, and continues to manage the ISO 39001 management system behind the business' approach to road safety, and acting as chair of the ISO TC 241.

Anybody who thought that I would be doing less work on Road Safety when I retired is seriously mistaken.

I think, if anything, being freed of the “day job” has given me more time to fully embrace my passion of making the world a safer place for all road users.
So, what have I been up to?
 
Well, I continue to be engaged with the Transport team of FM Conway as much as possible. We have taken so many great steps over the years, with some amazing innovations of our own, and an ongoing willingness to embrace the technologies, innovations and approaches, to ensure that the standards adopted by FM Conway are truly up there with the best in the world.
 
This week I have been in the office, chairing the working group that created, implemented, and continues to manage the ISO 39001 management system behind the business’ approach to road safety.
 
It was, sadly, my last meeting as chair. It made sense for me to step back and leave the role to someone who is a full-time employee of the business, but I shall remain engaged as an advisor and, hopefully, be able to offer guidance or insight whenever they need it.
 
I have continued to offer such help to a number of businesses who are just starting on the route to ISO 39001 certification. We all benefit if there are more businesses certified to the standard, and I am always delighted when firms contact me for help and I am delighted to freely offer all the assistance they might need.
 
My new role, as acting chair of the ISO TC 241, the technical committee (TC) responsible for producing, and managing the 39000 series of standards, has been keeping me pretty busy too.
 
We have three published standards, and a further one under development. There are currently three working groups (WG):
 
  • WG 4, is responsible for marketing the standards.
  • WG 6, which produced ISO 3903 and was published in June 2023. It has remained active to enable ongoing collaboration for its members to work with WG4 and to produce and attend academic conferences to present papers on the standard, the world’s first standard for ethics of AI. So far, the group has received invites to present to prestigious conferences in Venice and Las Vegas.
  • WG 7 is responsible for writing the new standard, ISO 39004, which is a best practice standard for businesses to provide home services from a digital platform, such as Amazon, Just Eat or Deliveroo. The post-pandemic world has seen such a growth in these businesses that there really needs to be some guidance on road safety, specific to their activities.
I am a member of each of those working groups, and the convenor of WG 6, so I do have plenty of work to do for each of them. For example, I am just finishing up writing a new ‘Start-up Guide to ISO 39001’ to help new businesses to understand how to embrace the standard.
 
Additionally, as chair of the TC I have to work with the committee secretariat and manager to keep the committee functioning! The prime task at the moment is ‘encouraging’ the convenor of WG 4 and WG 7 to organise the next meeting of their groups!
 
The other major job for the chair, at the moment, is selecting where this year’s Plenary Meeting will be. I get to see all of the tentative offers from hosts and watch as they either fade to nothing or firm up to a positive formal offer. I’ve seen Buenos Aries, Montevideo, Kuala Lumper, and even El Salvador come up as options. We will be making the final decision within the week, and I look forward to telling you where I will be going at the end of this year.
 
 
My role on ISO also has two other responsibilities.
 
I represent TC 241 on the ISO Technical Management Board (TMB), so I get a say on the direction of all ISO management systems.
 
But I don’t always get my way! My meeting with the TMB earlier in the year saw me, unsuccessfully, resisting a plan to make an immediate amendment to every published management system standard to ensure that they address the issues of climate change. Whilst I consider climate change to be of immense importance, it does not need to be included in a management system that, for example, looks after IT Security.
 
Oh well…I lost the argument, but at least my concerns are noted (important for when I say ‘I told you so!’)
 
My other key responsibility is representing TC 241 on the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration.
 
I am tremendously proud of this role. I attended my first online meeting a few weeks ago and it turned out to be the 20th anniversary of its founding. They detailed some of their achievements (see the slide below), and I am truly humbled to be part of such an influential group. I plan to volunteer for as many tasks as possible. Judging by the highlights of their timeline, this seems to be an excellent opportunity to influence world thinking on road safety.
 
And here is my most exciting news.
 
The next meeting of the group is in June and it is a face-to-face meeting being held in New York City. The evening before the meeting, the entire group are the guests of the Bloomberg Road Safety Initiatives Awards being held at the prestigious ‘Shed’ in NYC.
 
I am so excited about this trip, the opportunity to network with the most influential players in the World for Road Safety, and of course, who’d turn their nose up at a trip to New York!
 
I look forward to telling all about it in my next post.
Related blogs