In 1872, Maurice Urban, a director of the National Railway Company of Belgium, asked Robert Vinçotte, a young engineer, to help found an organisation to inspect steam boilers in factories.

The Association grew rapidly though, because of, among other reasons, the increasing legal pressure on factory owners to make their workplaces safer for their employees.

But the First World War would put a halt to the Association's growth: not only did the latter refuse to inspect German-controlled installations, but a great number of its engineers were drafted into army service.

Only in 1936 would the implication of only inspecting steam boilers (true in the beginning, but not anymore by 1922) be elided for the short "Association Vinçotte" (henceforth: AV).

Yet business would pick up faster this time, allowing a study trip of Richard Vinçotte, another son of the first director, to the United States, in 1947.

Called AV Nucléaire, it would focus on making secure the growing number of nuclear power plants in Belgium and abroad.

Anticipating the problems of the future, it also invested in noise pollution research and set up the first mobile lab in Belgium to investigate air quality through samples.

This finally led to a merger with its competitor AIB, making the new "AIB-Vinçotte" the biggest player at inspection and certification on the Belgian market.

[8] Of course, as described in the previous section of this article, the Belgian state would introduce legislation concerning the safety of the workplace only ten years later, slightly undermining the pure laissez-faire philosophy enunciated here.

Already in 1894, president M. Jottrand declared that henceforth AIB would start inspecting chains, whose breakage was causing heavy accidents in the mining and construction business.

After the First World War, AIB's personnel remained constant, and hirings started soaring after 1931, showing the solid expansion of the Association in that period.

Finally, in 1989, it merged with its major competitor in Belgium, the Association Vinçotte, making the combined "AIB-Vinçotte" the biggest player on the Belgian market.