Ralph Richter Retires from NIST OWM

Ralph Richter will retire from the NIST Office of Weights and Measures (OWM) on 03 May 2025, after 40 years of federal service. Early career highlights include serving on active duty as a US naval officer on a Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruiser deployed to the Persian Gulf and as a senior-level civilian engineer for the Department of the Navy’s Supervisor of Shipbuilding. Ralph joined NIST in May 1994 and has served in several roles, including as a program analyst in the Office of the NIST Director to develop and coordinate NIST's partnerships with the states (1998-1999) and as a senior engineer for NIST's metric program (1994-1998). His foundational expertise in weights and measures, legal metrology, and technical infrastructure development allowed him to seamlessly transition into a career in international legal metrology starting in the year 2000. 

Through his 25 years of work with the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML), he led high-level technical and diplomatic problem-solving and negotiations to harmonize international standards for measuring instruments and systems and legal metrology infrastructure and regulations across the globe. His technical committee leadership activities have involved an extensive range of vitally important industrial sectors, including water; natural gas and utility meters; the full spectrum of petroleum-based products; cryogenic liquids; load cells; non-automatic weighing instruments; weigh-in-motion scales; taximeters; vehicle speed instruments (e.g., radar and lidar); and instrumentation for the commercial measurement of various material properties, such as mass and density. He has served in multiple international leadership roles as the Secretariat of several technical subcommittees within the OIML TC 8 for liquid/gas measurement standards and for many years as Convener of OIML R 117 "Dynamic measuring systems of liquids other than water." Ralph Richter is a leader of the world leaders in this community.

Ralph has also actively participated in all of the corresponding/relevant domestic Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) including the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI), the American Gas Association (AGA), the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the American Petroleum Institute (API), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the American Water Works Association (AWWA), and the National Conference on Weights and Measures (NCWM). His participation in these domestic SDOs for the past two decades successfully brought the international perspective to the domestic standards development process.

In addition to his extensive portfolio and leadership in the international and U.S.-based legal metrology arenas, Ralph was active in the two Regional Legal Metrology Organizations (RLMOs) in which the U.S. is a member, including as the Inter-American Metrology System (SIM) representative on the high-level OIML Advisory Group for Countries and Economies with Emerging Metrology Systems (CEEMS AG). In this role, one of his major accomplishments was to provide key contributions to OIML D1 "National metrology systems - Developing the institutional and legislative framework." This document (developed and published jointly with the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, BIPM) provides advice to national authorities (directed mostly toward developing economies) on issues to consider while developing policies for their national metrology systems and establishing national laws related to metrology. Ralph has also represented the U.S. for more than 15 years in the Asia-Pacific Legal Metrology Forum (APLMF). Through his leadership, the organization has harmonized many of its legal metrology activities toward internationally-accepted practices and has removed technical and administrative barriers to trade in the Pacific Rim region.

More recently, Ralph Richter has successfully served as the new International Secretariat for OIML technical committees related to "Instruments for Measuring Mass and Density" (TC9), "Load Cells" (R60), and "Measuring Instruments for Road Traffic" (TC7/SC4) and has participated in a selective high-level team to address problems and to significantly accelerate the previously stalled project to completely overhaul OIML R76 "Non-automatic weighting instruments" -- one of OIML's flagship documentary standards. Ralph also led the US delegation to the OIML Certification System (OIML-CS) Management Committee meeting, which plays a critical role in worldwide acceptance of measurements and measuring systems that facilitate global trade.

In 2023, Ralph Richter received the prestigious NIST B. Stephen Carpenter Award “for consistently providing strong and world-class leadership for over two decades, significantly advancing international standards for measuring instruments and meaningfully improving the harmonization of legal metrology infrastructure throughout the globe.” Furthermore, Ralph received recognition from OIML in 2020 for his outstanding contribution and leadership in the revision of the definitive international standard OIML R 117 “Dynamic measuring systems for liquids other than water.” He also received a Bronze Medal Award in 2016 for his standards development work in domestic and international documentary standards in the area of liquid and gas flow meters.

Ralph is really looking forward to many more grand adventures in retirement with Jeanne, his spouse and favorite travel-partner for the past 39 years … including several lengthy over-the-horizon journeys on their blue-water sailboat S/V Sionna.

As a recognized national and international expert in the field of fluid measurement systems, including instruments/systems for measuring the full range of petroleum products, Ralph will rejoin OWM as a NIST Associate upon retirement.