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BS9801 - What is it? > Background
Background

What is itThe British Standard BS 5750 (ISO 9001) and BS 7750 (ISO 14001) revolutionised industry worldwide by setting best practice in quality and environmental management. Tens of thousands of companies are reaping the benefits derived from these two standards.

We are now moving beyond quality and environment into Sustainability Management and BS 8901 is the very first standard to specify a sustainable management system for industry. BS 8901 has been designed specifically for the events industry and specifies the requirements for a sustainability management system for events.

The purpose of this new standard is to help the events industry conduct business operations in a more sustainable manner.

BS 8901 was first published on 30th November 2007 and was revised and re-issued in September 2009.

BS 8901 shares common management system principles and processes with the ISO 9001 standard on Quality Management and the ISO 14001 standard on Environmental Management. If you already have systems in place to meet either of these standards then you will be well placed to adopt BS 8901.

BS 8901 is a management system standard. A management system is defined as a system to establish policy and objectives and to continually achieve those objectives. BS 8901 requires organisations to understand the sustainability issues relevant to their event(s) and to put in place measures to control and minimise these impacts. It requires organisations to aspire to continually improve their sustainability performance in relation to the management of events.

It is foreseeable that many event clients, particularly corporations and local authorities will demand that event organisers, venues and suppliers to the industry adopt the standard. Indeed, the London 2012 Olympics are requiring organisations to be working towards implementation of BS 8901.

In time, meeting the requirements of BS 8901 will become a minimum requirement for anyone wishing to operate in the events industry.