Where no standard exists, your specification becomes the benchmark

Ask a simple question about your business: which of the things you make, sell or install are covered by no external technical standard at all? Many owners cannot answer it. Fewer still can say who set the performance figures that customers rely on in place of a standard: the load rating on a datasheet, the shelf life on a label, the accuracy figure in a quote, the service life in a proposal.

It is tempting to assume that where no standard applies, no benchmark applies. That is wrong. Legal duties, such as reasonable care and the consumer guarantees that goods be of acceptable quality and fit for purpose, continue to apply whether or not a technical committee has written a standard for your product. What disappears is the external document that would otherwise supply the numbers. Something still supplies them, because customers cannot buy and businesses cannot build without stated performance.

What supplies them is your own specification: a datasheet, a quotation, a label claim, a tender response or a note on a drawing. Whoever wrote that document has set the benchmark you will later be measured against, using your business’s authority and, often, without anyone senior deciding it. This article explains three states a performance claim can be in, why the authored state is the riskiest, and how to manage your claims deliberately.

Why standards have gaps

Standards develop where there is enough market volume, technical stability and consequence to justify the effort of writing them. New technologies, niche products and products that fall between disciplines often fail at least one of those tests. So gaps cluster in exactly the areas where many small businesses try to stand out: new products, specialised services and novel combinations.

There is also an asymmetry worth understanding. Where no local standard exists, borrowing a reputable overseas standard is a sensible way to fill the gap. But where a local standard or requirement does apply, a certificate against an overseas standard does not automatically satisfy it, however demanding the overseas regime. Test methods, thresholds and criteria differ. The obligation runs to the benchmark that applies, not to a comparable one.

Three states a performance claim can be in

Every performance claim your business makes or relies on sits in one of three states:

All three are legitimate. But they carry very different exposure. In the covered state, responsibility for the benchmark is shared with the body that wrote it, and your defence is external and checkable. In the borrowed state, you made a choice, and you may need to explain why you chose that document, and that version or grade, over alternatives. In the authored state, you are the only source of the figure, and your specification is the benchmark.

The problem is not that authored benchmarks exist. It is that they are usually reached by drift rather than decision. A specification written for one job is reused for the next, becomes a template and turns into the business’s declared capability, without anyone with the right authority ever approving it.

How borrowing can hide a decision

Suppose a small additive manufacturing business prints structural brackets to customers’ designs. There may be guidance on the printing process, but no standard for what a printed bracket must achieve in each application. The business adopts mechanical property figures from an overseas document and publishes them on its quotes. Customers design their products around those figures.

The borrowing may be perfectly reasonable. The risk is that it is invisible. The figures look just like figures backed by an applicable standard, and customers treat them as inherited rather than chosen. The business has effectively taken on the role of a standards body for that class of part, without the review, testing and insurance that role would normally involve.

How an authored benchmark is created without noticing

Now consider a small food producer making a product style with no specific compositional standard. Someone still decides what the product is and how long it keeps, and that decision reaches customers as a label claim. Food businesses are generally responsible for setting the date marks on their products, and the date may have been set as much by commercial considerations, such as distribution reach, as by technical evidence about how the product keeps.

From the moment it is printed, that date is the benchmark. Any later inquiry, by a customer, a retailer or a regulator, will start from it. The producer is not meeting a benchmark. It is publishing one.

Contract wording does not settle it

Phrases such as “fit for purpose”, “in accordance with good industry practice” or “to the satisfaction of the client” do not supply a benchmark. They defer it to a future dispute, where it will be decided by people looking back at a failure. An undefined benchmark is not an absent benchmark. It is a benchmark set later, by whoever is most persuasive. Where possible, name the performance figures, test methods and documents the parties actually intend.

A simple claim map

The practical tool is a claim map: an inventory of the performance claims your business makes, with the state, source, owner and evidence for each.

Step 1: List the claims

Collect every performance figure that reaches customers: datasheets, quotes, labels, websites, tender responses, drawing notes and proposals. Include load ratings, accuracy, durability, shelf life, temperature ranges, efficiency, capacity, service life and similar figures.

Step 2: Trace each claim to its source

For each figure, identify who set it and what document it came from. If no external document can be named, the claim is authored. If the origin cannot be found quickly, treat it as authored until shown otherwise.

Step 3: Rate the consequence

For each authored or borrowed claim, ask what would happen if the figure were wrong by a margin a competent critic would consider plausible. Anything affecting personal safety, structural adequacy, food safety, health or a regulated outcome deserves priority, regardless of how much revenue it brings in.

Step 4: Match authority to exposure

Compare who approved each high-consequence figure with who would normally approve a financial commitment of similar size. If a junior drafter or a sales proposal has effectively committed the business to a large liability, review and re-approve the figure at the right level, or withdraw it.

Step 5: Check for applicable local benchmarks

For each borrowed figure, confirm whether a local standard or regulation actually applies. If it does, the overseas document is not a substitute.

A worked example

This is an illustration. A small business makes custom stainless steel handrail brackets for architects and builders. For years, its quotes have stated “rated to 1.5 kN” for its standard bracket. The figure came from a calculation an engineer did for one early project, and has since appeared on every quote.

When building the claim map, the owner discovers:

• The original calculation assumed a particular wall fixing and spacing that many later projects did not use.
• No physical testing was ever done.
• Several projects used the bracket in situations where an applicable building requirement sets loading criteria, so the claim was really in the covered state for those projects, and the evidence needed to match that requirement.

The owner commissions an engineer to review the design, runs physical load tests on representative fixings and publishes revised ratings for specific fixing conditions, with the test basis stated. Quotes now name the fixing assumptions, and projects outside those conditions are referred for specific engineering. The business has turned an accidental benchmark into a deliberate, supported one, and its quotes are more credible to architects as a result.

Evidence that supports an authored claim

If you are the source of a benchmark, the quality of your evidence becomes your main defence. Stronger evidence includes:

• Physical testing under conditions representing real use, with the method and results recorded.
• Calculations by a suitably qualified person, with assumptions stated.
• Independent review or testing by a laboratory or engineer not involved in the design.
• Field data from products in service, such as failure rates, returns and inspections.
• Comparison with related standards, explaining why the chosen figures are reasonable.

Weaker evidence includes the business’s own history of using a figure without problems, which may only mean the figure has not yet been tested by circumstances, and figures copied from competitors or suppliers without verification.

Match the strength of evidence to the consequence of the claim. A cosmetic finish claim may need little. A load rating on a safety-related product needs a lot.

Signals worth watching

• Performance figures in quotes that cannot be traced to a test, calculation or document.
• Customers asking which standard a product complies with and receiving only an internal specification number.
• The same figure appearing across unrelated products, suggesting a template has replaced analysis.
• Overseas certificates offered in markets where a local requirement applies.
• New products reaching customers before anyone has decided what governs their performance.

Setting a new claim deliberately

When you launch a product or service that will need an authored or borrowed benchmark, follow a short routine before the first figure reaches a customer:

1. Check for applicable standards and regulations in each market you will sell into.
2. If none apply, decide whether to borrow an existing external document, and record why you chose it over alternatives.
3. Gather evidence proportionate to the consequence of the claim.
4. State conditions and limits with the figure: temperature range, installation method, use case, storage conditions.
5. Have the claim approved by someone whose authority matches the exposure.
6. Record it in the claim map with a review date.

When being the benchmark is an advantage

Setting your own benchmark is not always a weakness. In a genuinely new product class, it may be the only option, and there can be commercial advantage in defining how a market judges performance. A business that publishes clear, well-tested, honestly stated performance figures can become the reference point for its niche. The key is to enter that position deliberately: with evidence, a documented rationale, an owner with appropriate authority and, where it makes sense, involvement in developing future standards.

How this applies to a small Australian business

Small businesses that innovate, customise or work in niche markets often author more benchmarks than they realise. Practical steps:

• Stop copying performance figures between quotes without checking that they still apply.
• Record the basis for each published figure: the test, calculation or document it comes from, and the conditions it assumes.
• Test what matters, especially for safety-related or high-consequence claims.
• State conditions and limits clearly in datasheets and quotes.
• Name the benchmark in contracts instead of relying on open-ended wording.
• Check which local requirements apply, such as building codes, product safety rules, food standards and consumer law, with the relevant authority or an adviser.
• Review the claim map whenever you launch a new product, enter a new market or adopt a new technology.

Under the Australian Consumer Law, statements about performance must not be misleading, and goods must meet the consumer guarantees. The articles on selling benefits, not features and why a substitution can void your compliance evidence cover related issues.

Common mistakes

• Assuming no standard means no obligation.
• Reusing figures from old quotes or projects without checking their basis.
• Treating a borrowed overseas document as neutral, when choosing it was a decision.
• Offering overseas certificates where a local requirement applies.
• Relying on vague contract wording instead of naming the intended benchmark.
• Letting junior staff or sales templates set high-consequence figures.
• Having no evidence beyond the business’s own past use of a figure.

Questions to ask

• Which of our products and services are covered by no external standard?
• For our most consequential performance claims, who set each figure, from what source and when?
• Where we borrowed an external document, who chose it and why?
• Are we offering overseas certificates where a local requirement applies?
• What evidence supports our authored claims beyond our own history of using them?
• Do our contracts name the benchmarks we actually intend?
• Who has authority to approve a new performance claim?

Bringing it together

Where no external standard covers your product or service, your own specification becomes the benchmark. Performance claims sit in three states: covered by an applicable external benchmark, borrowed from an external document you chose, or authored by your business. Authored and borrowed claims are legitimate, but they should be decisions, backed by evidence and approved by someone with authority matching the exposure. Build a claim map, trace each figure to its source, rate the consequences, test what matters and name benchmarks in contracts. Every business authors some of its own obligations. The question is whether you know which ones.

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Source: KEVOS notes. Examples in this article are illustrations. This article is general information, not legal or engineering advice.