Császár (1963) and Deák (1991) have introduced the notion of half-completeness in quasi-uniform spaces which generalizes the well known notion of bicompleteness. In this paper, for any quasi-uniform space, we construct a half-completion, called standard half-completion. The standard half-completion coincides with the usual uniform completion in the case of uniform spaces. It is also an idempotent operation in the sense that the standard half-completion of a half-complete quasi-uniform space coincides (up to a quasi-isomorphism) with the space itself.