Robert Wessel, Ph.D., the assistant executive director and director of technical services for the Gypsum Association, is featured in a column in the August 2007 edition of ASTM International’s Standardization News. The article details how Wessel, serving as the secretary for ASTM’s committee C-11 on Gypsum and Related Building Materials and Systems, coordinated the combining of nine separate gypsum-related material standards into a single umbrella standard, ASTM C 1396/C 1396M, Specification for Gypsum Board.

Under Wessel’s supervision, the new standard was introduced while the original nine standards were phased out over a three-year period and eventually withdrawn. To facilitate the phase-out of the nine standards, ASTM and the Gypsum Association launched separate public awareness campaigns to alert the specifier and building official communities to the changes.