British Standards

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
BSI Kite Mark Logo - Made up of the letters 'B' & 'S'
Enlarge
BSI Kite Mark Logo - Made up of the letters 'B' & 'S'

British Standards is a trading division of the British Standards Institution and is part of BSI Group which also includes a testing organisation. British Standards has a Royal Charter to act as the standards organisation for the UK. It is formally designated as the National Standards Body (NSB) for the UK.

BSI group incorporates three divisions - the Standards division which publishes British Standards, the Product Services division (the "Kitemark") and the Mananagement Systems division, a management systems registrar.

The standards produced are titled British Standard XXX where XXX is the number of the standard. British Standards currently has over 17,000 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 Kite Mark can be used to indicate certification by the BSI, but only where a Kite Mark 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 Kite Marks 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.

British Standards began in 1901 as the Engineering Standards Committee, led by James Mansergh, to standardise 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.

Another key activity carried out by British Standards is the CE Marking of Medical Devices. The CE 0086 marking can be issued to devices that are found to comply with the Medical Device Directive.

Contents

[edit] Examples of British Standards

BSI British standard headquarter in Chiswick district in London.
Enlarge
BSI British standard headquarter in Chiswick district in London.

[edit] Publicly Available Specifications

The BSI also publishes a series of Publicly Available Specification (PAS) documents [1]. Unlike a regular British Standard, these are not the outcome of an (often lengthy) industry-wide consensus process, but have instead been sponsored by a single company. As such, they are primarily a marketing tool for individual companies, who can have their private specifications relatively quickly "rubber stamped" by the BSI, rather than the result of an effort in industrial standardization.

[edit] Examples

  • BSI PAS 78 Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites
  • BSI PAS 100 Composting specification
  • BSI PAS 101 Specification for recovered container glass
  • BSI PAS 102 Specification for processed glass for selected secondary end markets
  • BSI PAS 103 Specification for quality and guidance for good practice in collection and preparation for recycling
  • BSI PAS 104 Specification for quality and guidance for good practice for the supply of post consumer wood for consumption in the manufacture of panel board products
  • BSI PAS 105 Specification for paper waste

[edit] Availability

British Standards are sold by BSI Business Information [2]. 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. Like with the products of other national standards bodies, the per-page price of these documents is substantially higher than that of mass-market books, which hinders access by students and average consumers with a casual interest in such specifications.

Many British Standards (BS) – as well as some of the European and International Standards that were adopted as British Standards (BS EN, BS ISO) – are also available in public and university libraries in the United Kingdom, either on paper or online via a British Standards Online subscription. However, the BSI makes standards available to these libraries only under severe licence restrictions, which forbid loan, inter-library loan, open-shelf access, and copying of more than 10% of a document by library users. The BSI library in Chiswick charges visiting members of the public a fee of £25 per half day [3].

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../b/r/i/British_Standards_5caa.html"
In other languages