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BSI Group
...making excellence a habit.
Company type
Non-profit distributing incorporated body operating under Royal Charter
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.
BSI Group headquarters building in Gunnersbury, West London, featuring the BSI Group logo
BSI was founded as the Engineering Standards Committee in London in 1901.[5][2] It subsequently extended its standardization work and became the British Engineering Standards Association in 1918, adopting the name British Standards Institution in 1931 after receiving a Royal Charter in 1929.[2] In 1998 a revision of the Charter enabled the organization to diversify and acquire other businesses, and the trading name was changed to BSI Group.
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]
In 2021, BSI appointed its first female chief executive officer, Susan Taylor Martin.[8]
Activities
Meeting of the international standards committee for the C++ programming language, hosted at the British Standards Institution in 1997
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.
BSI also publishes standards-related books, CD-ROMs, subscription and web-based products as well as providing training on standards-related issues.
Management systems assessment and certification
BSI representative presenting a standards certification to the International Maritime Organization in 2018
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.
It is independently accredited[10] and assesses a wide range of standards and other specifications including:
BSI Group Kitemark certification symbolKitemark symbol as seen on an access cover in Newtownards, Northern Ireland
Within Testing Services, BSI's best known product in the UK is the Kitemark, a registered certification mark first used in 1903.[2][5] The Kitemark – which is recognized by 82% of UK adults[11] – signifies products or services which have been assessed and tested as meeting the requirements of the related specification or standard within a Kitemark scheme.
BSI also conducts testing of products for a range of certifications, including for CE marking. CE marking must be applied to a wide range of products intended for sale in the European Economic Area. Frequently manufacturers or importers need a third-party certification of their product from an accredited or 'Notified' body. BSI holds Notified Body status for 15 EU Directives,[12] including construction products, marine equipment, pressurised equipment and personal protective equipment.
BSI also conducts testing for manufacturers developing new products and has facilities to test across a wide range of sectors, including construction, fire safety, electrical and electronic and engineering products.
Within Healthcare, BSI provides regulatory and quality management reviews and product certification for medical device manufacturers in Europe, the United States, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Canada and China.[13] It is the market leader in the US, the world's biggest healthcare market.[14]
Milestones
BSI EMEA headquarters in Milton Keynes
BSI is the world's first national standards body.[15]
BSI created one of the world's first quality marks in 1903, when the letters 'B' and 'S' (for British Standard) were combined with V (for verification) to produce the Kitemark logo.
BSI was instrumental in the formation of ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, in 1947 and of its European equivalent, CEN, in 1961.[16]
BSI pioneered the development of management systems standards: the first of which was BS 5750,[2] the original quality management systems standard which formed the template for the ISO 9000 series of quality standards, first published in 1994.
BSI published the world's first environmental management standard, BS 7750, in 1992. This led to the publication of the first international environmental management standard, ISO 14001, in 1996. BSI also published the world's first sustainability standard, BS 8900, in 2006.
BSI's management systems operation in the UK has been carbon neutral since 2006.[17] BSI reduced staff's business travel by 200,000 miles per annum, and invested in carbon offsetting in the UK and Bulgaria.
BSI was nominated a Business Superbrand in the UK in 2004, and profiled in their annual Superbrands publication in 2013.[18][19]
Acquisitions
Starting in 1998, BSI Group has adopted a policy of international growth through acquisition as follows:[20]
1998: CEEM, USA and International Standards Certification Pte Ltd, Singapore
2002: KPMG's certification business in North America
2003: BSI Pacific Ltd, Hong Kong
2004: KPMG's certification business in the Netherlands
2006: Nis Zert, Germany; Entropy International Ltd, Canada & UK; Benchmark Certification Pty Ltd, Australia; ASI-QS, UK
2009: Supply Chain Security Division of First Advantage Corp. USA; Certification International S.r.l, Italy; EUROCAT, Germany
2010: GLCS, the leading certifier of gas related consumer equipment in the UK and one of the top three in Europe,[21] the certification business of BS Services Italia S.r.l. (BSS); Systems Management Indonesia (SMI).
2013: 9 May 2013 – NCS International and its daughter company NCSI Americas, Inc.[22]
2015: 24 January – EORM, a US consultancy specialising in environmental, health, safety (EHS) and sustainability services[23]
2015: 30 January – the management systems certification business of PwC in South Africa[24]
2015: 3 June – Hill County Environmental Inc, a US environmental and engineering services consultancy[25]
2016: 4 April – Espion Ltd and Espion UK, experts at managing and securing corporate information[26]
2016: 15 August – Atrium Environmental Health and Safety Services LLC, experts in occupational safety, industrial safety and environmental compliance[27]
2016: 22 September – Creative Environment Solutions (CES) Corp., an Environmental and Safety consulting firm[28]
2016: 4 October – Info-Assure Ltd, a leading provider of cyber security and information assurance[29]
2016: 15 December – Quantum Management Group Inc, a US environmental, health and safety (EHS) consultancy[30]
2017: 5 December – Neville Clarke, the Business Process Improvement Expert [31]
2018: 8 November – AirCert GmbH, a specialist aerospace certification company located in Munich, Germany[32]
2019: 3 April – AppSec Consulting, a US cybersecurity and information resilience company[33]
2021: 1 February – Q-Audit, a JAS-ANZ accredited healthcare auditing body based in Sydney, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand.[34]
The built environment sector ... needs to accelerate the adoption of readily available means of providing product traceability. ... [T]here is a strong case for materials and products to carry permanent marking to ensure their identification and traceability...and...a consistent labelling and traceability system.[36]
BSI Identify uses new Digital Object Identifier (DOI) technology "to deliver a unique, constant, and interoperable identifier", known as a BSI UPIN, "which can be assigned to products to help UK manufacturers to directly manage information about their products in the supply chain".[37] The aim of the BSI Identify programme is that "wherever you are with [a] product, you can take a snapshot of the QR code with your mobile device and it will immediately take you to the product technical data sheet. You can see exactly what product it is, you can answer any questions about it, you can see installation advice etc."[38]
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. The BSI Group produces British Standards under the authority of the charter, which lays down as one of the BSI's objectives to:
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.
Business continuity may be defined as "the capability of an organization to continue the delivery of products or services at pre-defined acceptable levels following a disruptive incident", and business continuity planning is the process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company. In addition to prevention, the goal is to enable ongoing operations before and during execution of disaster recovery. Business continuity is the intended outcome of proper execution of both business continuity planning and disaster recovery.
The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of QMS, including the seven quality management principles that underlie the family of standards. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard must fulfill. ISO 9002 is a model for quality assurance in production and installation. ISO 9003 for quality assurance in final inspection and test. ISO 9004 gives guidance on achieving sustained organizational success.
ISO 14000 is a family of standards by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations negatively affect the environment ; (b) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (c) continually improve in the above.
BS 7799 was a British standard "Code of Practice for Information Security Management", first published as such by the British Standards Institution (BSI) in February 1995. Read about the origins of BS 7799 here.
ISO/IEC 20000 is the international standard for IT service management. It was developed in 2005 by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 and revised in 2011 and 2018. It was originally based on the earlier BS 15000 that was developed by BSI Group.
The Kitemark is a UK product and service quality trade mark which is owned and operated by the British Standards Institution.
Information security standards or cyber security standards are techniques generally outlined in published materials that attempt to protect the cyber environment of a user or organization. This environment includes users themselves, networks, devices, all software, processes, information in storage or transit, applications, services, and systems that can be connected directly or indirectly to networks.
ISO 13485Medical devices -- Quality management systems -- Requirements for regulatory purposes is a voluntary standard, published by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for the first time in 1996, and contains a comprehensive quality management system for the design and manufacture of medical devices. The latest version of this standard supersedes earlier documents such as EN 46001 and EN 46002 (1996), the previously published ISO 13485, and ISO 13488.
ISO/IEC 27002 is an information security standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), titled Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection — Information security controls.
The ISO/IEC 27000-series comprises information security standards published jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).
A Publicly Available Specification or PAS is a standardization document that closely resembles a formal standard in structure and format but which has a different development model. The objective of a Publicly Available Specification is to speed up standardization. PASs are often produced in response to an urgent market need.
British Approvals Service for Cables is an independent accredited certification body headquartered in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. Here, the organization's dedicated testing laboratory also operates which is believed to be the largest of its type in Europe. BASEC was established in 1971 and principally provides product certification services for all types of cable and wire, ancillary products and management systems within the cable industry. The organization maintains operations throughout the world including Africa, Middle East, America, Asia and Europe.
The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is a private organization that works as a "coalition of action" from the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) and brings together retailers and brand owners (manufacturers) from across the CGF membership. The GFSI operates under multi-stakeholder governance, with the objective to create "an extended food safety community to oversee food safety standards for businesses and help provide access to safe food for people everywhere". GFSI's work in benchmarking and harmonization aims to foster mutual acceptance of GFSI-recognized certification programs across the industry, with the ambition to enable a "once certified, accepted everywhere" approach.
ISO 50001Energy management systems - Requirements with guidance for use, is an international standard created by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It supports organizations in all sectors to use energy more efficiently through the development of an energy Management System. The standard specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and improving an energy management system, whose purpose is to enable an organization to follow a systematic approach in achieving continual improvement of energy performance, including energy efficiency, energy security, energy use and consumption.
ISO 20121 is a voluntary international standard for sustainable event management, created by the International Organization for Standardization. The standard aims to help organizations improve sustainability throughout the entire event management cycle.
ISO/IEC 27001 is an international standard to manage information security. The standard was originally published jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 2005, revised in 2013, and again most recently in 2022. There are also numerous recognized national variants of the standard. It details requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an information security management system (ISMS) – the aim of which is to help organizations make the information assets they hold more secure. Organizations that meet the standard's requirements can choose to be certified by an accredited certification body following successful completion of an audit. The effectiveness of the ISO/IEC 27001 certification process and the overall standard has been addressed in a large-scale study conducted in 2020.
The Cyprus Organisation for Standardisation, or CYS, is the national standardisation body of Cyprus, whose principal activity is the production of standards and the supply of standards-related services.
ISO/IEC 27017 is a security standard developed for cloud service providers and users to make a safer cloud-based environment and reduce the risk of security problems. It was published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) under the joint ISO and IEC subcommittee, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27. It is part of the ISO/IEC 27000 family of standards, standards which provides best practice recommendations on information security management. This standard was built from ISO/IEC 27002, suggesting additional security controls for the cloud which were not completely defined in ISO/IEC 27002.
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