Navigating significant technical complexity, strict safety requirements and tight financial margins is nothing new for the construction industry and the wider built environment. That’s to say nothing of quality, scope creep, supply chain relationships, and sustainability targets.

Managing so many concurrent, and often conflicting, challenges requires resilience, confidence, and agility. By putting standards at the heart of operational decision-making and multidisciplinary workflow design, built environment professionals can overcome these challenges, embrace new technologies and remain fit for the future.

The benefits of implementing a standards strategy

The benefits of a standards-led approach to business strategy are felt by businesses of all sizes.

In the past, some smaller business owners have dismissed this approach, concluding it is only for larger, well-established businesses.

This perception is understandable in resource-stretched small and medium-sized enterprises, but the truth is that standards help smaller businesses just as much as larger ones and can often have a more significant impact. For example, they can be used to accelerate tender prequalification, simplify legislative and regulatory compliance, and increase knowledge of new innovations.

To learn more on the topic of innovation within the built environment, click here.

Other benefits of standards include:

• They ensure the quality and safety of products and/or services

• They help you to achieve compatibility between products and/or components

• They help you to access markets and sell to customers in other countries

• They enable you to satisfy your customers’ expectations and requirements

• They reduce costs, eliminate waste and improve efficiency

• They help you to comply with relevant legislation including EU regulations

The key standards for your business

Construction supply chains are built on good communication and trust.

Supply chain partners can use standards to develop and maintain these connections as well as deliver important assurances about their operations and responsibilities. In this way, standards act as a common reference point across geographical boundaries and business cultures.

The international BS EN ISO 19650 series of standards, for example, will improve opportunities across borders for small construction businesses to win contracts in new markets on a more equal basis. Steadily superseding the PAS 1192 suite of standards, BS EN ISO 19650 parts 1 and 2 cover information management across the lifecycle of an asset. Created in response to growing international consensus around Building Information Modelling (BIM)’s transformative potential, it helps optimize international collaboration, reduces project costs and timescales, and improves quality.

Of course, there are also many other non-construction-specific standards that every built environment business can use to improve organizational efficiency — standards like BS EN ISO 9001 Quality management systems, BS EN ISO 45001 Occupational health and safety management systems, and BS EN ISO 14001 Environmental management systems. 

Other universally applicable standards include BS EN ISO/IEC 27001 Information technology and BS ISO 31000 Risk management.

For businesses operating within the built environment, implementing a standards-led strategy to achieve their goals ultimately communicates a commitment to fundamental quality, resilience, and innovation – regardless of where their organization sits in the supply chain or typical asset life cycle.

Start your journey with standards by adding all the key construction standards to your collection today.

Discover BSI Knowledge

Over 100,000 internationally recognized standards are available for simple and flexible access with a BSI Knowledge subscription. In your quality-critical industry, our tailored subscription service puts the control in your hands, with traceability to monitor and demonstrate your business's access to standards. Build your own custom collection of standards, or opt for access to our GBM48 Construction in General module and keep up-to-date with any relevant changes to your standards strategy. Request to learn more.