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RMSS: About Us
The Standards development process of the RMSS

User Requirement
Any RSA-Military standard is preceded by a User Requirement (UR). The requester is usually given the opportunity to discuss his or her UR at the Coordinated Working Group meeting (CWG) of the RMSS, a meeting which takes place every second month.




The object at this stage is to:

• extensively ascertain the validity of the need and to verify whether any alternative standard exists (for example in the commercial environment) that could be used instead or could perhaps be tailored; and
• determine to what extent the development of the document will really be for the benefit of standardisation, particularly at RSA-Military level, and therefore that it does not serve only the needs of a single (sometimes project specific) user.

Once the UR is accepted by the CWG, it is presented to the RMSS for acceptance and approval.

Funding, execution and management of the project
After approval, the source of funding for the project is examined. Work is sometimes done on an internal basis, in which case no funds will be required. Whatever the case may be, ample opportunity exists for people with specific knowledge to directly or indirectly participate in the development of new (or the updating of existing) standards, i.e. either by way of managing a standards project, participating on the Integrated Project Teams (IPTs) or merely supplying casual inputs.

Once approval of the project has been given by the RMSS, it is registered as a RSA-Military standards project and a document number, amongst other things, is allocated.

Management aspects are also considered, for instance the allocation of a project officer, project leader, representatives, basis of document review, etc. Hereafter the project is managed according to standard project management principles. Constant feedback on progress must be given to the RMSS via the CWG.

Approval, promulgation and issuing
When completed, the final document is presented to the RMSS for approval, after which it is promulgated.

Most RSA-Military standards are currently available in either hardcopy or electronic format on internal networks, but indexes are also made available to external users through this site.

The administration, issuing and standardisation document control is handled by the RSA Military Standardisation Centre (RMSC) of Armscor’s Department Quality.

For detailed procedure under development and administration of RSA Military Standardisation documents, refer to A-PROC-3032 (Armscor standardisation process)