The 2015 changes to 9001 and 14001 place a greater emphasis on a business’s “Leadership”. Leadership will involve understanding the “context” within which the organisation operates. The ‘context’ of an organization (or its ‘business environment’) refers to the combination of internal and external factors and conditions that can have an effect on an organization’s approach to its products and services. As a result, consideration of an organization’s context must now be an element of the management system design and implementation process. So an appropriate strategy with a management system that addresses the internal and external issues which impact on the organisation’s ability to meet requirements must be devised. Clearly, this will require a demonstrable understanding of the needs and expectations of interested parties and will go beyond, for example, project specific expectations of a main contractor customer to, for example, codes of conduct, how a main contractor expects their supply chain to behave pre and post-contract.
Specialist contractors will have to show they understand what it means to be a player in their chosen markets, i.e. what does it mean to be an “approved” contractor for their customers? Main contractors who understand this can work with and influence their supply chain more, to the benefit of both parties.
Leadership will therefore be required to demonstrate a greater direct involvement in the organization’s management system as it must be integrated with the company’s strategic direction and context; when done well this will allow the setting of priorities and the establishment of appropriate objectives for the business based on the risks and opportunities that emerge from the ISO process, and the determination of what needs to be monitored and measured, so you know how the business processes are performing. In short there will now be a focus on ‘leadership’ rather than just management of your business systems. Indeed, “Business Management” may replace “Quality Management” in ISO terminology – i.e. there can no longer be a Quality Management System (QMS) or Integrated Management System (IMS) that effectively stands alone to be invoked when needed, everything will need to be fully integrated into the whole process of managing the business. Foy Certification has always stated that this should be the case and has encouraged our customers to develop an IMS that goes beyond ISO requirements and covers all aspects of your business including your unique culture.
Foy Certification still has limited availability for our programme “Guaranteed ISO Certification by Christmas”
This is for specialist contractors, starting in September 2015, and guarantees Triple ISO Certification by Xmas 2015 for those committed to do so.
Please register your interest via andrew@foycertification.com or laura@foycertification.com
