Note preview
MADE IN ARGENTINA
The elevator and safety were born on the same day, when Mr. Elisha Otis invented the parachute. From then until today, elevator manufacturers around the world have pursued safety.
To this end, since the mid-twentieth century, industrialists, together with engineers and governments, have been concerned with developing norms and standards that maximize safety in the use of an elevator and an escalator, optimize all of its components, its operation, the steps of its manufacture and also its traffic and itsperformance. And in recent times, energy saving and sustainability have been added to this concern for safety.
The Argentine Institute for Standardization and Certification, originally the Argentine Institute for Rationalization of Materials: IRAM, was founded on May 2, 1935, and was the first standardization body in Latin America. Since then, IRAM has been in charge of standardization in Argentina.
We all aspire to buy high-quality products and hire safe services, bringing good performance and easing our lives.
Standards, if followed when manufacturing a product or providing a service guarantee this quality. In Argentina, the famous blue seal of IRAM has promised for many decades the peace of mind that standards and their certification give.
We wanted to know a little more about the meaning of standards, who makes them, how, where, and what is behind that blue seal that has always guaranteed the good quality of a product in our country. So we went directly to the sources and interviewed Civil Engineer Guillermo Zucal, in charge of the safety management that includes, among other organizations, the Elevators and Escalators Subcommittee, at the IRAM offices, located at 552 Perú Street in CABA.
IMPORTANCE OF IRAM IN THE WORLD
To give the reader a better idea of IRAM’s relevance, we can say that it has been a full member of the international certification body IQNet since 1998, and it has been part of its board of directors since 2000.
Furthermore, it is a representative member of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in Argentina. It is the Argentine representative of ISO in the “Pan-American Commission on Technical Standards” (COPANT) and in the Mercosur Association for Standardization (AMN).
It has agreements with different international organizations and universities, such as AENOR, AFNOR, and ABNT and universities such as UBA and UNLP. Finally, branches of IRAM are spread within Argentina and in Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru.
