BSI Fast Facts

  • The British Standards Institution was founded in 1901, making it the first national standards body in the world
  • Seventy five per cent of companies listed on the FTSE 100 index and two-fifths of Fortune 500 businesses utilize BSI’s services
  • The BSI Group has at its core the world’s largest National Standards Body – producing an average of 2,000 new standards annually.
  • BSI is one of the world’s largest independent certifiers of management systems, with 60,000 registered sites across the globe. It is also the UK's and North America’s largest certifier.
  • BSI is a leader in the development of standards based business solutions, and as such is the originator of the world’s most popular management systems standards and specifications.
  • These include the ISO 9000 series of quality management standards – adopted to date by around 897,000 organizations in 170 countries worldwide – which was developed from British Standard BS 5750 and was first published in 1979. 
  • ISO 14001 for environmental management, was derived from BS 7750,  published by BSI in 1992.  ISO 14001 is now adopted by 129,000 organizations in 140 countries.
  • Additionally, ISO/IEC 27001 for information security management, ISO 10002 for complaints management and ISO/IEC 20000 for IT service management were all developed from British Standards.
  • BSI was also respsonsible for the development of OHSAS 18001 for occupational health and safety, now BS OHSAS 18001, and PAS 56 for business continuity management, now BS 25999.
  • In 1903 among the first standards published was one which reduced the number of sizes of tramway rails from 75 to five, resulting in a £1 million annual saving. 
  • In 1903, the British Standard Mark, now known as the Kitemark®, was registered as a trademark.  In our 2006 survey 82 per cent of the British public recognized the Kitemark®.
  • BSI was founded by the man who engineered Tower Bridge – Sir John Wolfe-Barry.  His father designed the Houses of Parliament in London
  • BSI has been independently voted as a UK Business Superbrand every year from 2003 to 2008.
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