NBN ensures Belgian companies and stakeholders have easy access to the latest expertise in various sectors.
Trusted knowledge is our motto.
The NBN Standards Portal is the digital gateway to standards. It allows companies, organisations and professionals to access their standards collection anytime and anywhere.
Thanks to the NBN Standards Portal, customers can easily look up standards, manage them and stay up-to-date with changes. This saves them time and increases their efficiency. In addition, the platform offers personalised features such as favourites and notifications when updates are made.
In 2024, we completed the migration of our customers to the new NBN Standards Portal. This portal is even more user-friendly, intuitive and faster, with more features for users and administrators.
With the migration behind us, we conducted a survey of our customers. We wanted to know about their experiences with the portal, as well as the quality of service provided by NBN. The overall score was over 80%.
Also in 2024, experts from businesses, organizations, governments and education came together to work on standards development.
Our experts ensure that standards are developed in new fields and that technological developments are closely monitored and shared with the sector. In 2024, we brought together no fewer than 3,043 Belgian experts in 707 standards committees. Thanks to their efforts, we are working on standards that have an impact in numerous sectors.
Our sector operators play a key role as a link between NBN and the business community. Thanks to their contacts, they identify and mobilise the most competent experts to contribute to the standards committees, ensuring solid support for the developed standards. They also play an active role in managing these committees, thus contributing directly to the development of standards in Belgium.
We aim to strengthen our cooperation with sectoral operators each year. In 2024, this was reflected in our active participation and support of more than 10 events, seminars and plenary meetings. In addition, we brought all sectoral operators together twice to discuss the future of standards development and to work together to continuously improve the services offered to experts.
Since standards are a crucial and powerful tool for organisations to manage their sustainable transition, NBN has made dedicated efforts to expand its sustainability activities.
NBN has hosted start-up events and a webinar for new committees on sustainability: circular economy, hydrogen technology, sustainable finance and carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS).
In 2024, NBN took significant steps to raise awareness around standards and standardisation among academics, teachers and students in higher and secondary education. From the completely revamped Edu portal to the presentation of the NBN Sustainability Award, in the past year we again undertook many activities to support this awareness.
The Edu portal had a complete makeover this year. The updated user interface and modern layout were designed to significantly improve the user experience for students, teachers and academic staff.
In total, we had about 2,500 users on the Edu portal from higher and secondary education. More than 170 educational institutions use the portal: 145 secondary schools, 21 colleges and 10 universities.
When we look at user roles, we see the following trends.
Users of the Edu portal
This year we presented the NBN Sustainability Award for the second time. We received 34 entries from which the jury selected four theses for the final round.
Engineering student Elisa Kooy was named winner of the NBN Sustainability Award 2024 with her thesis on hydrochar. This innovative product, obtained from fish and shellfish waste, offers various promising applications, from soil improvement to filtering wastewater. Her research opens a path to a sustainable solution for the growing mountain of marine bio-waste.
.jpg)
Last year, once again many participants attended our training courses on ISO 9001 (quality), ISO 14001 (environment) and ISO 45001 (occupational health and safety) management standards.
We expanded our offer to include training on ISO/IEC 27001 (information security). This management system is broadly applicable and helps organisations of all sizes and industries protect sensitive information, such as financial data, intellectual property and other confidential data.
In our training courses on ISO/IEC 17025 (quality management of labs), we started a valuable collaboration with Belac, which provided an introduction on accreditation. In light of the positive response, we are adding training on ISO/IEC 17020 (quality testing) to our offer next year.
The eighth edition of the NBN Thank You Event took place in November at the unique venue of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. We thanked 175 experts in attendance and 14 sector operators who had contributed to standards development.
Winners Caterina Brusasco (Large Companies Category), Mercedes Mira Costa (Young Experts Category) and Raf Hens (SMEs Category) stand out not only for their deep expertise, but also for their dedication to innovation and collaboration within complex technological and industrial challenges.
NBN participated in several events, including:
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on 5 March 2024 in case C-588/21 P on public access to a number of harmonised standards based on Regulation 1049/2001. The ruling confirms that the copyright protection of harmonised standards is not in question, but that they should be made accessible free of charge. These standards are available in reading mode through the website of the European Commission.
Standards are also a crucial cornerstone for our own operation. NBN has again been certified for ISO 9001 (quality management) and ISO 27001 (information security). We continue to work on smooth service delivery and ensure our information systems are properly secured.
.jpg)
.jpg)
