For most of the last century, if an organization wanted to shape credible best practice with BSI, the route was clear: a formal standard, developed through consensus and published for the world to use. That route remains as powerful as it has ever been. What's new is what now sits alongside it.
Today, BSI offers three more distinct routes to developing credible guidance and frameworks: PAS standards, BSI Flex, and Pathways. Each is built on the same foundations of independence, rigour, and stakeholder engagement. Each suits a different kind of challenge. Together, they represent a significant expansion of the ways organizations can develop trusted guidance and frameworks, a wider toolkit for a world where challenges are multiplying and the pace of change continues to accelerate.
AI governance. Climate disclosure. Digital trust. Supply chain resilience. Some challenges benefit from a publicly recognized standard. Others require a framework that can evolve as understanding develops. Some call for a tailored solution designed around the needs of a particular organization or sector.
The underlying need remains familiar: helping people address shared problems through shared, credible approaches.
PAS: a route to recognized guidance
A PAS is a consensus-based standard governed by BSI and developed through a structured, collaborative process. PAS standards sit within BSI's standards portfolio, carrying public credibility and market recognition from the moment they are published.
PAS works well when an organization or consortium wants to build confidence in a new approach and have the result recognized through a formal standards-development process. Sponsors propose areas of focus and contribute expertise and funding, while BSI oversees development to support transparency, balanced participation and long-term credibility.
PAS 2080 is one example of what this approach can achieve. The infrastructure sector accounts for more than half of UK greenhouse gas emissions and faces significant pressure to reduce carbon across the asset lifecycle. Sponsored by the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Green Construction Board, PAS 2080 established a shared framework for identifying carbon hotspots, setting science-based targets and reducing emissions.
For Anglian Water, which used PAS 2080 to reduce both capital carbon and capital expenditure, the appeal lies in its ability to align stakeholders around a common goal. As its Head of Carbon Neutrality explains, "the magic of PAS 2080 lies in unifying the entire value chain towards lower carbon solutions."
That unifying effect also delivers commercial benefits. Skanska's UK Carbon Lead notes that the standard "increases our operational efficiency and allows us to collaborate well within disciplines", while the company's Executive Vice President highlights the broader business case: "reducing carbon will reduce our costs, which in turn makes us more efficient and effective… So it's a win-win for the sector."
BSI Flex: guidance for evolving markets
Some fields are still finding their shape. New technologies emerge, evidence accumulates and understanding evolves. Guidance written for today's landscape may need to adapt as knowledge grows.
BSI Flex was designed for exactly these conditions. It draws on the same principles of stakeholder engagement, consultation, and transparency as PAS standards, but follows an iterative model that allows outputs to evolve through successive versions. The result is guidance that can keep pace with change while maintaining a structured and credible development process.
Pathways: tailored, client-led frameworks
Sometimes the right output is not a public standard. It may be an internally focused framework, a governance model or sector-specific guidance designed around an organization's own objectives and operating environment.
Pathways is BSI's collaborative, client-led route. The client determines the scope, governance, and stakeholder participation, while BSI contributes expertise across research, engagement, consultation, and drafting. The result is a structured, credible framework shaped around the client's goals and supported by BSI's independent approach.
Two examples bring this to life.
EDANA: creating consistency across a supply chain
EDANA, the international association for nonwovens, represents more than 250 companies across 40 countries. The industry faced a familiar challenge: organizations were duplicating effort while trying to solve the same problems through different approaches.
Working together, EDANA and BSI developed a voluntary standard that established a common framework the sector could adopt. The result was greater consistency, reduced duplication, and a shared benchmark that organizations across the supply chain could rely on.
EDANA retained ownership of the framework throughout. Marines Lagemaat, Scientific and Technical Affairs Director at EDANA, explains the rationale clearly: "we chose BSI because of your strong reputation in drafting standards and your scale as an organization." Reflecting on the outcome, she adds: "credibility was at the heart of this project, and together we set a new benchmark for the industry."
VCMI: making a global consultation genuinely global
The Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative needed something different: an open, impartial, and representative consultation on guidance for credible climate action.
Through webinars, focus groups, and a dedicated consultation platform, BSI helped deliver a process that gathered, reviewed, and analysed more than 1,000 stakeholder comments from around the world.
The resulting guidance enabled VCMI's Scope 3 Action Code of Practice, backed by organizations including the ICC, We Mean Business Coalition, EDF, and the World Economic Forum.
VCMI's Technical Director described the engagement as one in which "BSI demonstrated exceptional expertise, and a deep understanding of the key steps required for a successful result." Its Engagement Manager highlighted a similarly collaborative experience, noting that BSI was "consistently responsive… and proactively proposed additional measures to enhance the consultation's success."
Two very different challenges. Two very different outputs. The same trusted foundation underneath both.
What links them, and what sets them apart
It would be easy to think of PAS standards, BSI Flex, and Pathways as separate routes. They're better understood as different applications of the same underlying capabilities: stakeholder engagement, consultation, research, facilitation, drafting expertise, and structured governance.
All three draw on BSI's independence, rigour, and experience in bringing people together around shared challenges. The mix varies depending on the objective, resulting in standards, guidance, frameworks, or other structured outputs.
Where they differ is in governance, ownership, and intended use. PAS standards and BSI Flex sit within BSI's standards portfolio and follow established standards-development processes. Pathways projects are bespoke and client-led, with BSI's role shaped by the scope and objectives of the work.
In practice, the choice often comes down to three questions: What outcome are you trying to achieve? How should it be governed? And what level of ownership do you want to retain?
The next chapter
More than a century after the first standards brought consistency to shared challenges, the principle behind them remains unchanged. Organizations make better decisions when they can draw on approaches that are understood, trusted, and developed through credible processes.
What has changed is the range of ways those approaches can be created.
Whether the goal is industry-wide alignment, guidance for an emerging field, or a framework tailored to a specific organizational need, BSI now offers a broader range of routes to help shape and create trusted best practice. Different challenges call for different approaches, but the objective remains the same: creating outcomes that people can understand, trust, and use with confidence.
