A Regulation typically takes one of three forms:

1. Full publication of all technical requirements, including administrative provisions, conformity assessment or deemed-to-satisfy requirements, in legislation per se. Often this type of regulation will exclude any reference to standards, although for practical reasons the “full publication” route is not used very widely. Modern regulatory good practice, as endorsed by government policies, would favour making use of reference to national standards, where they exist, over the full publication method, but examples of the latter still exist.
2. Reference to national standards under relevant legislation (national or lower level). In this method, a legislator is free to choose under what conditions of use it wishes to regulate a commodity, to prescribe appropriate conformity assessment provisions and, if necessary, to require compliance with deviations from the referenced national standards, where such are deemed necessary. In this method, which is the most common, the national standard typically provides the technical requirements for the commodity and the administrative provisions would be given in the regulation. At national level the regulation would typically be published by the applicable government department in terms of an existing Act of Parliament. In this method the national standard, being readily available, is often the most convenient choice for the legislator as the basis for regulation; it can readily be amended to keep up with technology (via the national standards process) and has the benefit that it already represents a national consensus of experts as to the appropriate level of fitness for purpose (in the case of a physical product).
3. Publication of a “Compulsory specification”. This is a mandatory standard, applicable to certain products and commodities at their point of sale, and is typically used to regulate safety-critical items where market failures would otherwise occur in the absence of regulation. Examples of the fields covered by compulsory specifications include electrical fittings, food safety, automotive components, etc.

The SABS Standards Division has developed around 80 compulsory specifications (compared to its voluntary national standards base of around 7 000 standards).

A compulsory specification has historically been developed by a SABS Technical Committee, sometimes initially as a national standard and sometimes as a separate document, and then recommended via the SABS Council to the Minister of Trade and Industry for implementation as a Compulsory Specification. After a public enquiry process, a Compulsory Specification is published in full in the Government Gazette (including provisions for the application of the technical requirements, administrative provisions, etc.). The Compulsory Specification then becomes law in its own right under the Standards Act. It is not a national standard and, typically, is applicable at the point of sale.