Legislation, regulation and contract compliance; KPIs, SLAs and QSHE; Governance groups, industry bodies and consultants… Do we not have enough on our plates already to worry about standards?
We may not be aware of this but standards and their development frame, guide, and normalize almost all areas of our lives.
BSI is a private company incorporated by Royal Charter in 1929 as the British Engineering Standards Association. It is recognized as the UK National Standards Body (NSB) by the UK Government.
Since the millennium there has been a specialist group of industry experts who volunteer their time, skills and knowledge to help support, guide and educate the profession. Within the Facilities Management (FM) discipline FMW/1 is the BSI moniker for the growing group of FM Professionals who make up the technical committee for Facilities Management. As a group, members of FMW/1 and its subordinate panels:
- draft standards for BSI
- represent the UK within European and international working groups and technical committees as participants, contributors and leaders
- contribute to the drafting of European and international standards
- present and share the knowledge and guidance through ad hoc webinars
Since the committee’s inception, its members have produced 22 British, European and International standards of which 15 are current. More impressively there are 15 active items in progress. (https://standardsdevelopment.bsigroup.com/committees/50083866)
Whilst many of the members are affiliated with nominated organizations such as BSRIA, BESA and trade or government associations that don’t begin with “B”, there are a similar number of independent experts who dedicate some of their time to the betterment of the industry.
Standards themselves offer the opportunity to consolidate, ratify and disseminate the acquired knowledge of the industry from a wide spectrum of sectors and industries. Whilst standards are drafted by committee members (including temporary members), the draft documentation is submitted for peer and public review -https://standardsdevelopment.bsigroup.com/. This means standards are checked and agreed by a wide range of people.
In spite of the large amount of work that goes into them, in most cases standards are not mandatory. One is therefore not bound to follow them. What they do is provide a solid, rationalised, ratified starting point. Essentially you are saving time, effort and the cost of hiring consultants to provide 3rd party independent advice.
The support offered by the standards’ guidance only applies where standards exist that relate to the situation. For this reason the Facilities Management Technical committee is always looking for inspiration. This inspiration can be in the form of:
- joining the committee
- contacting the committee to propose an area that could benefit from standardisation
- commenting on the produced standards
- helping to draft British standards
- supporting or leading the drafting of international standards
If this article has been of interest and you would like to discuss it further, please email the Committee Manager on anna.fricker@bsigroup.com or the Chair directly on n.blake@gardiner.com.
About the author - Nick Blake is the Chair of FMW/1 and is currently the Facilities Associate Director at Gardiner & Theobald LLP.
