NBS (National Building Specification) is a UK-based business providing

construction Construction are processes involved in delivering buildings, infrastructure, industrial facilities, and associated activities through to the end of their life. It typically starts with planning, financing, and design that continues until the a ...

specification information used by

architects An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

engineers Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while consider ...

and other building professionals to describe the materials, standards and workmanship of a construction project. It was launched in 1973 and its information is now used by over 5000 offices. A

specification A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard. There are different types of technical or engineering specificati ...

often forms part of the tender documentation along with

architectural drawings An architectural drawing or architect's drawing is a technical drawing of a building (or building project) that falls within the definition of architecture. Architectural drawings are used by architects and others for a number of purposes: to deve ...

for a contractor to price and then forms part of the contract documentation for the builder to construct the building. Since 1988 the NBS data has been structured on the

Common Arrangement of Work Sections ''Common Arrangement of Work Sections'' (''CAWS''), first published in 1987, is a construction industry working convention in the UK. It was designed to promote standardisation of, and detailed coordination between, bills of quantities and speci ...

. Until 2018, NBS was owned by the

Royal Institute of British Architects The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally, founded for the advancement of architecture under its royal charter granted in 1837, three suppl ...

(RIBA) via its RIBA Enterprises subsidiary. In June 2018, the RIBA announced it was selling a £31.8 million stake in RIBA Enterprises, to LDC, the private equity arm of

Lloyds Bank Lloyds Bank plc is a major British retail banking, retail and commercial bank with a significant presence across England and Wales. It has traditionally been regarded one of the "Big Four (banking)#England and Wales, Big Four" clearing house ...

. In November 2020, NBS was sold to Hubexo (formerly known as Byggfakta Group), a global company which provides data, insights and software solutions to the construction industry. In early 2021 the RIBA received £113 million from the sale of its stake in NBS.

Products

NBS maintains and updates Uniclass 2015, a unified classification system for all sectors of the UK construction industry originally released in 1997. In 2012, NBS launched the National BIM Library, featuring a range of generic and proprietary construction elements suitable for

building information modeling Building information modeling (BIM) is an approach involving the generation and management of digital representations of the physical and functional characteristics of buildings or other physical assets and facilities. BIM is supported by vario ...

. In 2019 NBS released NBS Chorus, a fully online specification platform for construction. In 2020 NBS released NBS Source, a new online tool, incorporating the National BIM Library, that created a single source for product information.

References

External links

*
The National BIM Library
*https://www.thenbs.com/nbs-source *https://www.thenbs.com/nbs-chorus Construction standards Royal Institute of British Architects 1973 introductions Standards of the United Kingdom {{Architecture-stub