Every standards body has the same story. The video project was approved in March. It is now October, the script is on version 11, and the technical committee has raised a point about whether "shall" was correctly rendered as "must".

The committee is not being obstructive. They are accountable for a document that organisations are certified against. If the video is wrong, a supplier misinterprets a requirement and fails an audit. Their caution is correct. The workflow around it is what is broken.

The mistake: reviewing the wrong artefact at the wrong time

Most agencies send a finished script to a committee. A finished script contains hundreds of decisions bundled together: technical claims, sequencing, tone, phrasing, visual direction. A reviewer who objects to one word has no way to approve the other 900. So they mark up everything, and the round trip takes three weeks.

The fix: separate accuracy review from editorial review

Split the sign-off into two passes on two different artefacts.

Pass one, the claims list. Before any script exists, extract every technical assertion the video will make as a numbered list of single sentences. "A Stage 1 audit assesses readiness, not effectiveness." Send that to the technical reviewer. They are now approving facts, which is their actual expertise, and they can do it in an afternoon.

Pass two, the script. Once the claims are locked, the script is a communication decision, not a technical one. It goes to the comms lead, not the committee. The technical reviewer sees it once, checking only that no approved claim was distorted in the writing.

This is the process REAS used to produce over 500 video lessons for the Quality Partner training portal with Paul Hardiman, the only European qualified by the IATF to train third-party auditors. His time is the constraint. Spending it on approving facts rather than debating phrasing is the whole game.

Three rules that keep it moving

Give the reviewer a decision, not a document. "Is this sentence true?" is answerable. "Any thoughts?" is not.

Timebox by artefact, not by project. Claims list: three days. Script: five days. A deadline on the whole project is a deadline on nothing.

Record the reviewer once, on camera, if you can. The fastest route to a technically accurate video is often to film the expert answering the question, then build around it. It removes the translation layer where errors enter.

REAS produces technical video for standards and certification bodies where accuracy is not negotiable. We already speak IATF 16949. Book a call.