ARE YOU SAVING


MONEY WITH YOUR ISO TRANSITION TO 2015?


Stephen MacDonald, Managing Director of SMA, explains how you can take advantage of the transition to reduce your annual auditing costs.


The transition to the new 2015 standard for ISO9001 and ISO14001 has generated a lot of debate, and nowhere more so than in the contract cleaning industry, where companies are six times more likely to be accredited than in UK industry as a whole.


Whether your quality management system is UKAS accredited, or certified by a non-UKAS body such as QMS, the fact is you will automatically lose your certification in September 2018 if you don’t update your systems and have them audited before then.


WHAT’S THE NEW STANDARD


ALL ABOUT? There are three key changes:


A requirement to demonstrate a more strategic approach to your business in the form of understanding the economic environment, identifying opportunities for growth and planning to exploit them.


A requirement to identify and assess business risks, and then show how you will mitigate their effects through a risk management plan.


A requirement to measure and monitor performance against objectives. This applies in particular to ISO14001, where you are now expected to actively measure your performance in reducing your impact on the environment.


WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO? Your accreditation body will most likely have contacted you already with some guidelines. If you are with QMS or similar, they may have offered to draft the new sections for you. Unless you’ve opted to draft the new sections yourself, which means you’re pretty much home and dry.


With UKAS accreditation, it’s slightly different. Depending on the awarding


42 | FEATURE twitter.com/TomoCleaning You will automatically


lose your certification in September 2018 if you


don’t update your systems and have them audited before then.


body, they will at the very least have notified you that you will be audited against the new standard at your next annual surveillance audit. In some cases, you may have also been asked to complete some paperwork to demonstrate that you’ve updated your procedures before the audit can take place. Whichever it is, you need to put the wheels in motion to draft the relevant sections and demonstrate that you are complying with your new procedures.


AN OPPORTUNITY


TO SAVE MONEY In updating the standards, one of the key ambitions of the ISO organisation has been to introduce commonality between the clauses in each standard so as to reduce duplication of management tasks, for example management review or internal auditing.


This means you can merge your ISO 9001 and 14001 management systems (along with 18001 if you have this) into one integrated quality management system. There are two benefits to this. Firstly, you will save yourself time in managing and internally auditing the system. Secondly you will almost certainly save on the costs of your annual external audit, as the auditor will be auditing one system rather than two or three. Over the years this could amount to several thousand pounds.


ARE ISO ACCREDITATIONS


WORTH HAVING? If your business relies on the public sector for contracts, you may find that without the right accreditations it is hard to qualify for tender lists. This is hardly surprising when there are often thirty or more companies applying for inclusion.


In the long run, however, accreditations are shorthand ways of letting prospects know your company is well managed. They come at a cost, but if the management system you create really does increase client satisfaction and give your company a competitive edge, then it only takes one new contract award or contract renewal to repay your investment.


There is no better time to document your management systems and win your first accreditation.


SMA is an independent consultancy set up six years ago specifically to help cleaning contractors and suppliers in the key areas of marketing, business development, ISO accreditation and business planning.


www.stephenmacdonaldassociates.co.uk


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