Philip

ASTM can be a long haul, and I have personal experience of that as well.  I perceive that the problem is that because it is all voluntary, individuals contribute to the extent that they have or make time.

The committee membership is, indeed, everything.  

Note that ASTM are presently trying to improve their standards production performance.  One of the approaches they recommend committees adopt is taking draft documents prepared by other groups and putting them straight into the committee or subcommittee ballot process.  Thus if a document is well written, researched and substantiated, it is likely to progress through the balloting process relatively quickly.

Again,  standard guides and practices are much more difficult to get through than test methods and specifications, simply because you are dealing with questions of 'professional judgement'.  Indeed, there has been a feud between the geotechnical professional orgainsations and ASTM over the preparation of standard practices and guides to geotechnical assessments, with the result that the documents prepared by ASTM have been watered down.

I think that architectural conservation does need much more in the way of standards tools for testing, evaluation and specification of materials.  However, I am not sure that guides and practices really belong in the ASTM Book of Standards.

Please let me declare my interest.  I have been involved with preparing a Standard Guide to the Selection of Exterior Dimension Stone for the past eight years (and it still hasn't made the first sub-committee ballot).  I've also been one of many vocal contributors to revisions to ASTM C1241 Standard Guide to Design and Selection of Anchors for Dimension Stone or some such title ... and these revisions, sorely needed, are still going around in circles.

Standards are very much a double edged sword.  Good ones are really difficult to find.  And to write.

Cheers

david