New TREC SOP Commentary

The Inspector Advisory Committee's SOP Sub-committee met via teleconference on 12/9 to begin the discussions and process of writing a Commentary for the new Inspection Standards of Practice that is due to go into effect 2/1/09. The Commentary will expand upon the language in the SOP, clarify the thinking and intent behind many of the SOP line items and generally attempt to explain, in more layman's terms, what is expected of the Inspector. The first Commentary meeting was about two hours long and resulted in preliminary, draft explanatory paragraphs for about 1/3 of the SOP topics. What struck me most during the process was the fact that the Sub-committee members writing the Commentary are the same ones that wrote the SOP and yet there was considerable discussion and even disagreement on what the SOP meant to each of the members. Basic, conceptual ideas were not agreed upon in certain sections and some Commentary sections resulted in obvious conflict with the new SOP. There were even instances of proposed changes to the recently approved SOP wording. There's a huge amount of work yet to be done with the Commentary...don't expect anything before mid-2009 at best.