Courtesy :Russian GOST R certification
GOST standards and technical specifications
The abbreviation GOST (rus) (SUST) (eng) stands for the State Union Standard. From its name we learn that most of the GOST standards of the Russian Federation came from the Soviet Union period. Creation and promotion of the Union Standards began in 1918 after introduction of the international systems of weights and measures.
The first body for standardization was created by the Council of Labor and Defense in 1925 and was named the Committee for Standardization. Its main objective was development and introduction of the Union standards OST standards. The first OST standards gave the requirements for iron and ferrous metals, selected sorts of wheat, and a number of consumer goods.
Until 1940, People’s Commissariats (Narcomats) had approved the standards. But in that year the Union Standardization Committee was founded and the standardization was redirected to creation of OST standards.
In 1968 the state system of standardization (SSS) as the first in the world practice. It included creating and developing five standards:
- GOST – State Standard of the Soviet Union
- RST – Republican standard
- IST – Industrial Standard
- STE – Standard of an Enterprise
- TU – Технические условия, literally “Technical conditions”, a document setting technical requirements to which a specific product, material, substance, etc. must comply; example: TU 14-3-571-2004, for CrNi60WTi alloy
The level of technical development, and the need to develop and introduce informational calculating systems and many other factors, lead to creating complexes of standards and a number of large general technical standard systems. They are named inter-industrial standards. Within the state standard system they have their own indexes and the SSS has index 1. As of 2020, seven standard systems (GOST standards) are valid:
- USCD – The Uniform System of Constructor Documentation (index 2)
- USTD – The Uniform System of Technological Documentation (3)
- SIBD – The System of Information-Bibliographical Documentation (7)
- SSM – The State System of Providing the Uniformity of Measuring(8)
- SSLS – The System of Standards of Labor Safety(12)
- USPD – The Uniform System of Program Documentation (19)
- SSERTE – The System of Standards of Ergonomic Requirements and Technical Esthetic (29)
The USCD and USTD systems take special place among other inter-industrial systems. They are interrelated and they formulate requirements for general technical documentation in all industries of economy.
The task of harmonization of Russia’s standards and the GOST standards was set in 1990 by the Soviet Council of Ministers at the beginning of the transit to market economy. At that time they formulated a direction that obeying the GOST standards may be obligatory or recommendable. The obligatory requirements are the ones that deal with safety, conformity of products, ecological friendliness and inter-changeability. The Act of the USSR Government permitted applying of national standards existing in other countries, international requirements if they meet the requirements of the people’s economy.
During the past years a large number of GOST standards were developed and approved. Nowadays there is a process of their revision so that they conform to international standard requirements. As the base is the system of international standards ISO, in Russia they created series of Russian standards such as GOST ISO 9001 or GOST ISO 14001, which absorbed the best developments of the world community but they also consider the Russia’s specific.
Historically, GOST R system originated from GOST system developed in the Soviet Union and later adopted by the CIS. Thus, the GOST standards are used across all CIS countries, including Russia while GOST R standards are valid only within the territory of the Russian Federation.
This system is aimed at providing the customer with safety and high quality of products and services. This right of the customer for safety and quality is guaranteed by obligatory certification of not only native, but also foreign produce. Produce that enters the territory of the Russian Federation and that is subject to obligatory certification according to the legislation of the Russian Federation must meet the requirements of Russian certification system.
List of products subject to obligatory certification is defined by Gosstandart and can be seen on www.gost.ru. The very system of certification GOST R has been valid in Russia for many years. The main normative base for it was national standards. At the same time active policy of Russia towards entering the WTO was the reason for adopting the federal law “On Technical Regulation” № 184-ФЗ. This law was designed to match Russian and European legislation in the sphere of technical regulation.
Creation of certification systems in Russia is provided by the Federal Law №184 “On Technical Regulation” Evaluating the product’s conformity to requirements of laws, standards, technical reglaments and other kinds of normative appears to be one of the most important possibilities of providing safety of different kinds of products for humans, environment and the state.
According to the FL № 184 any certification system includes:
- A central certification organ which performs organizational operations within the system;
- Certification organs that must prove their ability to perform activities in expertise and drawing up the certification documents in certain sphere of evaluation of conformity. Only certification organs authorized for such kinds of works, have right to perform such function;
- Certification laboratories performs tests and measurements of safety indicators or quality of the evaluated objects. Such laboratory must have equipment and trained staff (and test methods) to perform its activities. Existence of all the resources is proved by the Attestation of Authorization of the laboratory in the given sphere of activity;
- Applicants are individual entrepreneurs or Russian legal entities (in some cases foreign manufacturers), that intend to go through evaluation process to prove the conformity of their production to the legal requirements or some other certain requirements of the system of certification (to which it applied).
There is a great variety of objects for certification (different products and manufacturing processes, management systems, construction sites, etc.). A little smaller is the lists of risks that may be encountered by using some products and from which consumers should be protected. The variety of certification systems in Russia is explained by these two factors and by the wish of some corporations to introduce their own requirements for the product’s deliverers.
There two big groups of certification systems in Russia: voluntary and obligatory ones. From the names, it is clear that the evaluation of conformity for the objects of obligatory certification system appears to be mandatory requirement for all Russian manufacturers and for the products from abroad.