for

one Technical Project Leader

responsible for anthropometric and strength surveys and acquiring data

and for

one Technical Project Leader

for the development of the guidelines for the correct application of anthropometric and strength data
 

Please note that on 2020-03-20 the offer period/deadline for tenders has been extended to 2020-04-01, 10:00 (GMT+1).

The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) is a business facilitator in Europe, removing trade barriers for European industry and consumers. Its mission is to foster the European economy in global trading, the welfare of European citizens and the environment. Through its services it provides a platform for the development of European Standards and other technical specifications. CEN's National Members are the National Standardization Bodies (NSBs), which work together to develop voluntary European Standards (ENs), together with the CEN CENELEC Management Centre (CCMC). For an overview of the CEN members see the CEN website.

In the past several years, CEN received from the European Commission a number of Mandates for standardisation projects related to childcare articles, toys and other products destined for or used by children. Experts involved in the works of several CEN Technical Committees (CEN/TC) related to children have identified and emphasised the need of having precise and relevant requirements corresponding to the real use of the products that they are standardizing. For this purpose, the use of correct and up-to-date anthropometric data is of great importance.

Availability of correct anthropometric data is essential to define appropriate (safety) requirements such as probes, openings, loads, accessibility etc. in order to avoid/reduce entrapment, strangulation risks etc. The use of incorrect or out-of-date data may cause the (safety) requirements not to cover all children to whom they are destined. Furthermore, experience and knowledge of the anthropometric experts and manufacturers show that values for body measures and physical strength of children have remarkably changed in the past 30 years and no European-wide collection of data has been recently conducted to fill this gap. Additionally, due to lack of a single source of up-to-date and confirmed data, different technical bodies in the European Standardization system have been developing their own approaches to defining the safety requirements to address risks posed to children. This has led to a fragmentation of the requirements which might cause confusion to consumers, manufacturers and market surveillance authorities.

The existing horizontal CEN/ISO technical report CEN ISO/TR 7250-2 provides “Statistical summaries of body measurements from individual ISO populations”. The technical report, however, only covers four European countries (Austria, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands) and as the body dimensions of people have been increasing in many countries over the last decades some of the information contained might already be outdated. Furthermore, it only contains information for working age people and for children there is no such document available. For this reason it is necessary to acquire anthropometric data of children and to provide the stakeholders, in particular the industry, with this information, e.g. in a CEN technical report.

For this reason, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) will carry out, within CEN/TC 122 “Ergonomics” and in particular CEN/TC 122/WG 1 “Anthropometry”, a project to acquire anthropometric data of children and to provide the stakeholders, in particular the industry and CEN technical committees, with this information, i.e. in a CEN technical report. In addition, a CEN technical report on the correct application of anthropometric and strength data will be developed. DIN, the national standards body for Germany, provides the secretariat of both, CEN/TC 122 and CEN/TC 122/WG 1, and will perform the administrative management of the standardization work. 

As the knowledge about existing anthropometric data and its availability (e.g. commercially available data from private providers or scientific publications) and on the specific demand of data from the relevant stakeholders, e.g. standards writers, industry etc. was limited and in order to avoid unnecessary work, the project was subdivided into two project phases.

In a first phase of the project (SA 2014-09) available databases of anthropometric and strength data and the stakeholder needs for such data have already been identified and a gap analysis has been performed. The summary of the results of the first project phase is provided together with the call for tender.

The objectives of the 2^nd project phase which is subject to this call for tender are:

• acquisition of relevant existing available anthropometric and strength data of children in Europe;
• development of programme for the measurement for obtaining anthropometric and strength data of children in Europe to complement existing data (based on the needs identified in project phase 1 (see summary of Project Phase 1 on demands and availability of anthropometric data of children in Europe which is published together with the call for tender) and in consultation with the stakeholders);
• measurement of required anthropometric data to complement the existing data;
• practical evaluation of existing and actualized databases and processing and harmonization of data coming from both, acquired databases and the measuring campaign;
• estimation of measures in order to complement acquired and measured data to fill identified gaps;
• development of statistical anthropometric and strength tables;
• elaboration of guidelines on how to correctly apply anthropometric and strength data of children, e.g. when writing a standard or designing a product;
• publication of 2 CEN technical report on anthropometric and strength data of children in Europe and on the correct application of such data.

Tenders for the technical project leaders shall be sent by mail to the secretary of CEN/TC 122 "Ergonomics" Mr Sebastian Lentz. For more information see the call for tender.

Please note that the FAQs have been replaced by a revised version of the FAQs on 2020-03-05. The revised FAQs have again been replaced by a second revised version of the FAQs on 2020-03-20.