Congratulations! We are proud to announce that one of our very own, Mr. Mark Coppler, was just awarded the IEC Thomas A. Edison Award for exceptional achievement in arranging the first liaison between the standards writing and conformity assessment sides of IEC.

Mr. Mark Coppler is the current IEC TC 31 Liaison to IECEx and was the Chair of IEC/TC 31 Equipment for explosive atmospheres, from 2014 to July 2020. During that term, he worked to improve cooperation between IEC/TC 31 and IECEx, which is the IEC Conformity Assessment System for Certification to Standards Related to Equipment for Use in Explosive Atmospheres.

He arranged an official relationship between IEC/TC 31 and IECEx, which was finally accepted by IEC/SMB in 2017. He is Convener of the IECEx and IEC/TC 31 JWG 50 “standards coordination with IECEx”. As Convener of the JWG and in the years before, he regularly participated in the IECEx Annual Meetings and IECEx Operational Meetings as Chair of IEC/TC 31. With this outstanding contribution, the communication channel between IECEx and IEC/TC 31 has matured to become a very efficient tool which has a rising and significant impact on the work of the IECEx System. The successful service of the IECEx ExCB’s and ExTL’s is heavily reliant upon common interpretations of the IEC/TC 31 standards and this interpretation must be done by the responsible MT or WG of IEC/TC 31 and its SCs. Mr. Mark Coppler serves as the communication link between the conformity assessment side and the standards development side of the IEC and thus, his work results in a higher quality of work of the IECEx ExCB’s and ExTL’s, resulting in a higher level of safety of tested products and supplied services.

The LabTest team would like to congratulate Mr. Mark Coppler for his outstanding achievement and tireless dedication!