On Friday, June 4, 2021, starting at 10:00 AM, a press conference was held on the occasion of the adoption of the draft standard for the calculation of the design heat load in buildings BAS EN 12831-1 and BAS CEN/TR 12831-2 by the translation method.

Speakers at the conference were Mr. Aleksandar Cincar, Director of the Institute for Standardization of BiH, Mr. Jasmin Burzić, Chairman of the Technical Committee BAS/TC 47, Appliances and systems for heating and refrigeration, and the esteemed PhD Branislav Živković, a retired full professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Belgrade.

Mr. Cincar said that two very complex and extensive standards dealing with the method of calculation of the design heat load in buildings have been translated and that the Institute has planned to conduct other activities that should contribute to the improvement of this area, more precisely in developing guidelines that will define exactly what needs to be done to develop national annexes to this standard, in order that the standards become fully applicable in practice. He emphasized that the adoption of national annexes will create the conditions for the competent ministries to adopt regulations in which they will refer to the adopted standards and national annexes, which will make their implementation mandatory. In that way, the legislation of Bosnia and Herzegovina will be harmonized with the legislation of the European Union, and our business entities will become more competitive on the market. He pointed out that none of the neighbouring countries have translated these standards, and that on the basis of excellent cooperation with those countries, these standards will be used to improve some other areas. At the end of his address, Mr. Cincar thanked the Czech Embassy in BiH, the Czech Development Agency and the Czech Office for Standards, Metrology and Testing which helped in the implementation of this project.

Mr. Jasmin Burzić said that the Technical Committee BAS/TC 47 is dealing with the adoption of standards related to appliances and systems for heating and refrigeration. He said that the BAS EN 12831-1 and BAS CEN/TR 12831-2 standards were previously adopted by the promulgation method and that a great deal of effort had been made to ensure that these standards were also adopted by the translation method. He pointed out that in practice there was a lot of confusion during the implementation of projects since the data were inconsistent, and it often happened that some designers and participants in the implementation of projects did not understand all parts of the standard. He said that the key contribution in this work was given by PhD Živković, with his translations and advice in resolving certain dilemmas. He also pointed out the importance of the plan related to the adoption of national annexes, due to meteorological and other data that are important for calculations.

At the beginning of his address, PhD Branislav Živković praised the Institute for Standardization of BiH, which recognized the importance and initiated the translation of standards for heating and energy consumption in BiH. He pointed out that even though young engineers know English language, the interpretation of regulations and standards requires a very good knowledge of English, but also the subject itself. In  this area the calculation methods that were applied were mostly in accordance with the old German DIN standard DIN 4701, as well as to the proposal of the JUS standard from 1978, while European standard EN 12831was superficially and incompletely used. He pointed out that the problem is that the European standard EN 12831-1 and CEN/TR 12831-2 are  partially incomprehensible, and that there are no national annexes. These standards are quite flexible in the sense that they have defined what needs to be done and what can be done in one way or another. The national annexes that should be developed in the coming period will be based on European regulations and standards, and will contain data that are appropriate for our way of building, behaviour, energy sources that we use, etc.