The British Standards Institution (BSI) is the national standards body of the United Kingdom. BSI produces technical standards on a wide range of products and services and also supplies certification and standards-related services to businesses.
The Group now operates in 195 countries.[6] The core business remains standards and standards related services, although the majority of the Group's revenue comes from management systems assessment and certification work.[7]
BSI British Standards
BSI produces British Standards, and, as the UK's National Standards Body, is also responsible for the UK publication, in English, of international and European standards. BSI is obliged to adopt and publish all European Standards as identical British Standards (prefixed BS EN) and to withdraw pre-existing British Standards that are in conflict.[9] However, it has the option to adopt and publish international standards (prefixed BS ISO or BS IEC).
In response to commercial demands, BSI also produces commissioned standards products such as Publicly Available Specifications, (PASs), Private Standards and Business Information Publications. These products are commissioned by individual organizations and trade associations to meet their needs for standardized specifications, guidelines, codes of practice etc. Because they are not subject to the same consultation and consensus requirements as formal standards, the lead time is shorter.
With 80,000 clients, BSI is one of the world's largest certification bodies. It audits and provides certification to companies worldwide who implement management systems standards. BSI also runs training courses that cover the implementation and auditing requirements of national and international management systems standards.
Standards need consumers and consumers need standards - we needed new creative and flexible ways of working to enable consumer stakeholders to want to engage in developing and using British Standards.
An exploration into the economic impact of standards in the UK, including the perceived benefits of standards on key UK and international policy areas, such as the environment, innovation and international trade.
This standard is also available to be included in Standards Subscriptions. Standards Subscriptions from ANSI provides a money-saving, multi-user solution for accessing standards. Subscription pricing is determined by: the specific standard(s) or collections of standards, the number of locations accessing the standards, and the number of employees that need access.
Organizations of all sizes use standards to compete more effectively, from small businesses to multinationals and governments. For businesses that operate globally, applying international standards is one of the best ways to demonstrate quality, compatibility and consistency, and helps create a common language upon which to trade. Using standards benefits government organizations in many ways, from streamlining their own processes to helping build alternative approaches to regulation.
Standards are a tried and tested way to work more efficiently and effectively. They help organizations to improve their performance, reduce their risk and help them be more sustainable. Using our standards can help you improve the quality of your services, manage projects so they meet deadlines and stay within budget, strengthen the resilience of your IT systems, certify your products so they attract more customers, manage your assets better, and build successful collaborative relationships with other organizations.
Using standards systematically prepares you in advance for threats. Understanding the risks you face and then acting to mitigate them, you become a tougher, more resilient business, able also to respond to and build upon new opportunities.
BSI, the business standards and improvement company, today announces the first organization to have achieved certification to a landmark scheme which can support improvement in quality for the built environment sector.
British Standards (BS) are the standards produced by the BSI Group which is incorporated under a royal charter and which is formally designated as the national standards body (NSB) for the UK.[1] The BSI Group produces British Standards under the authority of the charter, which lays down as one of the BSI's objectives to:[2]
Set up standards of quality for goods and services, and prepare and promote the general adoption of British Standards and schedules in connection therewith and from time to time to revise, alter and amend such standards and schedules as experience and circumstances require.
"British Standards" means formal consensus standards as set out in BS 0-1 paragraph 3.2 and based upon the principles of standardisation recognised inter alia in European standardisation policy.
BSI Group began in 1901 as the Engineering Standards Committee, led by James Mansergh, to standardize the number and type of steel sections, in order to make British manufacturers more efficient and competitive. Over time the standards developed to cover many aspects of tangible engineering, and then engineering methodologies including quality systems, safety and security.
The BSI Group as a whole does not produce British Standards, as standards work within the BSI is decentralized. The governing board of BSI establishes a Standards Board. The Standards Board does little apart from setting up sector boards (a sector in BSI parlance being a field of standardization such as ICT, quality, agriculture, manufacturing, or fire). Each sector board, in turn, constitutes several technical committees. It is the technical committees that, formally, approve a British Standard, which is then presented to the secretary of the supervisory sector board for endorsement of the fact that the technical committee has indeed completed a task for which it was constituted.[5]
The standards produced are titled British Standard XXXX[-P]:YYYY where XXXX is the number of the standard, P is the number of the part of the standard (where the standard is split into multiple parts) and YYYY is the year in which the standard came into effect. BSI Group currently has over 27,000 active standards. Products are commonly specified as meeting a particular British Standard, and in general, this can be done without any certification or independent testing. The standard simply provides a shorthand way of claiming that certain specifications are met, while encouraging manufacturers to adhere to a common method for such a specification.
The Kitemark can be used to indicate certification by BSI, but only where a Kitemark scheme has been set up around a particular standard. It is mainly applicable to safety and quality management standards. There is a common misunderstanding that Kitemarks are necessary to prove compliance with any BS standard, but in general, it is neither desirable nor possible that every standard be 'policed' in this way.
Copies of British Standards are sold at the BSI Online Shop[9] or can be accessed via subscription to British Standards Online (BSOL).[10] They can also be ordered via the publishing units of many other national standards bodies (ANSI, DIN, etc.) and from several specialized suppliers of technical specifications.
British Standards, including European and international adoptions, are available in many university and public libraries that subscribe to the BSOL platform. Librarians and lecturers at UK-based subscribing universities have full access rights to the collection while students can copy/paste and print but not download a standard.[citation needed] Up to 10% of the content of a standard can be copy/pasted for personal or internal use and up to 5% of the collection made available as a paper or electronic reference collection at the subscribing university. Because of their reference material status standards are not available for interlibrary loan. Public library users in the UK may have access to BSOL on a view-only basis if their library service subscribes to the BSOL platform. Users may also be able to access the collection remotely if they have a valid library card and the library offers secure access to its resources.
Our purpose is to inspire trust for a more resilient world. Our solutions and services improve performance and support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. At BSI, our mission is to share knowledge, innovation and best practice to help people and organizations make excellence a habit. This is underpinned by our role as the national standards body and through our prestigious Royal Charter.
Our members
We work with 12,200 committee members who help us shape best practice codes and standards. And our subscribing members benefit from this work with their commitment to achieving standards of excellence.
UK national standards body
Our role as the UK national standards body reaches across the international standards community. You can get involved by helping to develop standards relevant to your industry, commenting on draft standards or becoming a consumer representative.
Our accreditation
We have been assessed against internationally recognized standards and operate to the highest levels of quality and service. We are accredited by 20 local and international bodies.
Standardisation is the process of creating, issuing and implementing standards. A standard is a document, established by consensus and approved by a recognised body. It provides rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results so that they can be repeated. The aim is to achieve the greatest degree of order in a given context.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is responsible for UK government general policy on everything to do with standards-making (but not on specific individual standards). We improve the standards infrastructure so that it meets the needs of UK industry and makes processes more relevant and business friendly.
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