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
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 over 69,000 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 first published in 1987 – adopted to date by over 1 million organizations in 178 countries and economies worldwide – which was developed from British Standard BS 5750 and published in 1979.
ISO 14001 for environmental management was first published in 1996, and was derived from BS 7750 which was published by BSI in 1992. ISO 14001 is now adopted by more than 220,000 organizations in 159 countries and economies.
Additionally, ISO/IEC 27001 (BS 7799) for information security management, ISO 10002 (BS 8600) for complaints management and ISO/IEC 20000 (BS 15000) 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 2011, and Kitemark® from 2008 to 2011.

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