Not quite sure where this "industry norm" comes from.
Ford Dearborn USA measure to 3 different pressure drops.
10 inches of water, 20 inches of water and 5 inches of Mercury or about 68 inches of water.
I've worked with/for a few OEMs and none I know work with 28 inches of water. It must be the after market.
The 68 inches of water is deemed to be in the ball park of the conditions of the exhaust port during blow down.
"With proper inertia wave tuning, you can achieve ~125-127% volumetric efficiency under the 28" H2O condition. Many people feel that ~130% VE is the max. possible with a naturally aspirated engine."
I'm not sure where these VE numbers are coming from.
Are you referencing ambient or pressure/temp conditions in the inlet manifold? I always reference ambient as referencing inlet manifold (EVEN for Boosted engines) means you cant do performance development work on anything upstream of the inlet manifold.
A Honda S2000 makes about 120% VE, an BMW M3 S54 may reach just under 110% VE. Racing engines may achieve 120 to 130% reference plenum/outside the trumpet/ambient.
There isn't an easy way to relate the 28 inches of water to the inlet conditions of a running engine as the flow is highly transient and pulsating. The only real way to relate pulsing transient flow to a steady state flow bench device is through flow theory such as Annand , Navier Stokes, Mass ,Momentum, energy as covered in modern 1 D cycle simulation codes such as Ricardo Wave, GT Power etc etc.