Find a Standard

Many projects require you to do some research before you begin to design a product, or to research the materials that you will use to make your product.

Sometimes you will need to find health and safety information, or regulations, or a relevant British Standard.

You need to be aware that there is not always a Standard for a finished product, such as a shop front, but there may be a Standard for a component, such as toughened glass for the window. There may not be a Standard for a finished kettle, but there is a Standard for the electrical component of a kettle such as the plug or wiring. Alternatively there may be a Standard for the property of a material, such as strength of timber or steel for a bridge, or flammability of textiles for curtains.

How to search for a Standard

First of all you should check the topics on this site to see if there’s already information on a Standard for your product, component or material.

If not, you can use the BSI Shop database of Standards. It contains details of all the Standards and related publications that are published, withdrawn or are in draft form and not yet published.

This will help you to search:

• Go to BSI Shop
• Key your search words into the keyword box, using the on-screen instructions e.g. +chair +wood (as two separate words) or "car speakers" (as a phrase). If you can't find a suitable Standard, try a synonym (similar word) or the wild key - lamp* will find lamp and lamps.
• The search engine is a “refining” search.  If you search for something and add an additional word/number to the search box, it will refine your existing results
• Once you have some results on the screen you can use the left hand “refine your search” column to quickly filter your results by various preset subjects
• Select the Standard you think is nearest to your product, component, or material
• You can cut and paste from the database into a Word document for your work or project folder.

Understanding Standards

You will see letters such as BS, EN, ISO, DD, before the Standard number. For help on the status of standards, click here and scroll down.

• BS means
  British Standard, used mainly, though not only, in the UK

• EN means
  European Standard, and is created for use throughout the EU countries

• ISO means
  International Standard and is created for use worldwide

• BS ISO means
  BSI has also published it for use in the UK

• BS EN ISO means
  British, European and an International Standard.
  Some are known just as ISO, eg. ISO 9001:2000

• CP means
  Code of Practice

• DD means
  Draft Document