ISO 12215-7 Global Loads Case 5

As long as a standard is harmonised, its date of publication does not matter. European Directive are fully compatible with the "new approach" for Quality Management Systems. Compared to the "old approach", no precise standard references are given in the body of the Directive 2013/53/UE, for instance. This gives more flexibility for the operators on the market to check, demonstrate and control the compliancy of their product.

As it is stated in the Annex II of the Decision No 768/2008/EC, that defines the "common framework for the marketing of products", the Technical Documentation that should be established should only contains :
[...]
- a list of the harmonised standards and/or other relevant technical specifications the references of which have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union, applied in full or in part, and descriptions of the solutions adopted to meet the essential requirements of the legislative instrument where those harmonised standards have not been applied. In the event of partly applied harmonised standards, the technical documentation shall specify the parts which have been applied,
[...]

Thus, Quality Management Systems in EC regulations do not impose to manufacturer the use of harmonised standards to demonstrate the compliancy of their products to European Directive. You are free to use whatever technical reference, as long as you can demonstrate their equivalence with the relevant standard, with respect with the corresponding requirement of the Directive. One can even use an obsolete version of a standards !

However, the presumption of conformity given with the compliancy to harmonised standard is very confortable for manufacturer, national authorities or control entities, for them to be discharged for a certain amount of responsability and need for competence, as the use of any other technical frame should be justify only by additionnal efforts, to fade away the risk of being pursued on the ground of not having firstly used the relevant harmonised standard, in the event of any court examination.

 

In summary and with clear words, far from harmonizations, etc., so that any designer who is quite confused can understand it, can ISO 12215-7 be used to obtain the CE marking of a multihull?. Thank you for an answer, if it is clear and concise, the better.

 

Yes, ISO 12215-7 can be used to obtain CE marking of a multihull. Depending on the designated control authority, It could be asked to, whether be compliant only with the chapter 9 / Local design pressures for multihulls (providing also additionnal calculations of the structural part of the plateform structure), or to be compliant with both chapter 9 / Local design pressures for multihulls and chapter 12 Global loads, althought the application of this last chapter requires corrections and interpretations from the user.

Since last year, I was asked 3 times to make use of the whole standard to demonstrate the compliancy of both sailing and motor multihulls, ranging from 15meters to 22meters, as requested by the Notified Bodies in charge of delivering certificates, prior for the crafts to be put on the market.

 

Well, then there is no reason to, or at least should not, disqualify a standard simply because it is not easy to apply. I agree that you have to know a lot more than is necessary to apply the Lloyd's Rules, for example, but it's all about buying ISO 12215-7, reading it, understanding it (and if you don't understand it, studying it a bit) and apply it.
Thank you Alan.