ISO Certification: How does it work? (and, is there a difference between Certification & Accreditation?)

ISO certification; whats the crack. Is it just another hoop to jump through then?

We get a fair few people coming to us particularly when they’re moving their business into the world of bids and tendering. Quite often you’ll get to that point and whilst looking at the sometimes, dizzying amount of information you need to submit; you’ll see a statement along the lines of “If you have ISO 9001 Certification, submit your certificate and skip to the next section” or something along those lines. If you’ve been sat there and gone What the hell is that. You aren’t alone!

A Long time ago in a country far, far away…

As society developed, trade expanded to being between towns, then cities and eventually internationally. Perhaps if certification was around in ancient Babylonia, we never would have found the worlds oldest existing customer complaint about Ea-nāṣir and his sub-par stock of copper ingots!

People soon realised that these trades needed agreed standards for goods; and with-it people who would independently check or inspect those goods.

It wasn’t until the early 20th century though that we come across the concept of certification; this was certification for standardisation; in 1901, what became the British Standards Institute (BSI) was founded with the aim of standardising the quality of steel sections used in construction within the UK. During World War II, standardisation played a crucial role in manufacturing and production of military equipment.

With the seeds sown; post war efforts from multiple countries saw the creation of the ISO (the International Organization for Standardization). 23rd Feb 1947 saw the official launch of ISO, the founding members saw international standards as a key to rebuilding the world after war.

Britain up till then had a mishmash of different services, councils and contractors and had probably got fed up of having to pay all these different levels of administration for disparate industries so they began to make moves.

In 1979 the new British standard BS 5750 (which later became ISO 9001) was published. The big certification bodies such as Lloyds Register of Shipping (and later BSI); companies who had existing networks of inspectors were invited to become the first companies able to issue certificates to businesses for this new standard. Other similar certification companies eventually followed suit and the industry of certification started.

The ISO, forever looking to create universally applicable standards for different industries, took BS 5750 and turned it into the first iteration of ISO 9001, the Quality Management Standard. Since then they have continued to expand their repertoire of standards and both businesses and governments have adopted these standards to demonstrate competence, improve efficiency and ensure compliance with legislation.

Bringing it back to the UK; Through the 1980’s there was a flurry of government ‘requested’ consolidations, the BCS merged with NATLAS and became NAMAS; a few years later they were asked by the government to merge with the NACCB and the child of this merger was the United Kingdom Accreditation Service also known as UKAS in 1995.

So, what is UKAS accreditation and why should you care?

Accredited vs. Unaccredited Certification Bodies

How the Certification Process Works (or should work!)

Conclusion

While unaccredited certification bodies may offer a quicker or cheaper alternative, the risks associated with unverified certification far outweigh the benefits. For businesses seeking long-term growth, international recognition, and compliance with industry best practices, choosing a UKAS-accredited certification body is the best approach.

By understanding the ISO certification process and the importance of accreditation, businesses can make informed decisions that benefit their reputation, compliance, and operational success.

We understand the ISO certification process and believe that it is important for our customers and others in general to understand it too. It’s the best way for you to make informed decisions about your ISO journey; we’re here to help make sense of certification. So please contact us if you have any questions about your business and how we can help with your certification.

OK, so you’ve got your company off the ground, you’ve got a few orders, a few repeat customers, the cash is trickling in, so how do you now scale that business upwards and turn that trickle into the torrent which will support your growth and future income?

Business owners have a huge range of intentions for their businesses, none of which should be criticised – if you are in the senior management of an organisation then it’s your business and it’s up to you what happens to it. I know of business owners who are happy to make one sale a week, then spend the rest of the week sitting on a river bank fishing. I know of others who are fighting tooth and nail for every order they can lay their hands on, and many who fit neatly in between.

So, if you want to make a £200 sale then take six days off to catch fish that’s fine, but you probably won’t be reading this blog, so I’ll leave you to your Carp, Perch or whatever your prey might be.

For the rest of us, getting a business off the ground is difficult, and how you scale it up seems to be a minefield, and in between the mines there are plenty of charlatans, ‘business advisers’* and scammers who assure you they will lead you to a pot of gold….

*I’m not saying all business advisors are up to no good by the way, I’ve met and used some who were excellent, but it is a “buyer beware” scenario.

Scaling Up

So how does your business work, how do you find new opportunities, how do you turn those opportunities into orders, and how do you successfully deliver against those orders and make sure you have happy and satisfied customers who will order again?

A “Management System”?

ISO 9001, is known as a “Quality Management Standard”, this is in reference to it helping form a high-quality business, not JUST the type or condition of the products that business then sells.

Using ISO 9001 correctly will have a knock-on effect, helping give consistency to the product or service you are selling. This standard is applicable to your business whether you are aiming for high-end, prestige products & services with a large margin, or even if you are in a high volume but highly competitive and low margin environment.

ISO 9001 builds on the idea that, in order to be as successful as possible, a business should first look at the market that it wants to operate in, identify and analyse the risks of working in those markets, then ideally find ways to control or mitigate those risks as much as possible.

It then builds on this by encouraging you to define how the business operates; the processes and methods of how your business really works. Then measure how efficient those processes are, with a view to improving them little-by-little, to make the workings of the business as efficient as possible. This should help by taking the process of turning a potential customer into a happy, satisfied one; and then making this process reliable and consistent, which will then enable you to grow as a business and potentially improve your margins by streamlining processes and reducing rework/complaint costs.

Many large procurement organisations insist on their suppliers using ISO 9001, they believe having these systems in place results in a more reliable supplier. In many cases this is then taken further by asking the suppliers to become “certified” to ISO 9001. This involves an independent third-party assessment* of your company’s operating processes, documentation and evidence to show you conform to the standards requirements.

Many businesses find that ISO 9001 opens opportunities with many more customers, it also greatly simplifies the completion of bid and tender documentation: often providing a copy of your ISO 9001 certification will negate the need to answer pages of questions and supply additional evidence to prove your credibility to the prospective customer.

*Within the UK, Europe and many places around the world, third-party assessment is viewed as being critical to proper certification. As such, government-controlled bodies have been developed to ensure that certification companies (the people doing the assessments and issuing certificates) are fair, meet a consistent standard and are suitably independent to minimise conflicts of interest.

For the UK, our body is known as UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service), they make sure the people giving out the certificates are meeting expectations.

It’s easy to check if these companies are approved by UKAS through the online register here.

Complexity

UK Business and Government

In 2021, amid the confusion of trying to get through COVID, Brexit and unstable political leadership a government body almost “sneaked” out a seemingly insignificant document, PPN 06/21 (Procurement Policy Note 06/21). At first glance, the document is fairly innocuous, just typical bureaucracy asking businesses to generate yet another piece of paper for the civil servants to file.

But, similar to how a leak can lead to a flood or a small disturbance to an avalanche; this policy note is highly likely to have long-term and far-reaching impacts on every business in the UK. Addressing it strategically could protect your business from unnecessary risks and costs.

Why does it matter?

So, what’s that got to do with your UK SME?

As mentioned, these big contracts with companies must be awarded to those with a carbon reduction plan. Those plans must take into consideration the carbon generated throughout the supply chain. In other words, the companies bidding for these contracts need to account for ALL the suppliers, sub-contractors, service providers etc. associated with the supply of related goods and services.

In the UK over 90% of registered companies fall into the SME’s category: business to business suppliers, who work into other bigger companies until they reach the size and turnover of those directly competing for huge government based contracts. Statistically, most UK businesses will be part of the government supply chain in one way or another even if you are far removed from the end contract. So, jumping back to the previous flood/avalanche analogy, the requirement for carbon reduction plans will undoubtedly trickle down the supply stream.

An environmental management system complying with ISO 14001 will make it far easier to generate such a plan should you need to. Especially as generally this isn’t a one off requirement, the plans need to be kept up to date, so year on year you are going to have to have access to the data to update the plan and show that your carbon generation is reducing. The reduction of environmental impact is a main building block and driver of ISO 14001 systems.

The Enviroment (Death) and Taxes

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes”. Though it may not have hit you yet, the links between environmental performance and taxation have already been established, for instance, if you sell anything in packaging (!) you’ll probably be paying a levee on the quantity of packaging provided per annum. It isn’t going to stop there.

Remember the EU, that thing we spent millions getting out of… In Europe CBAM has been implemented. CBAM is the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), a tax on carbon-intensive goods imported into the European Union (EU) at this point it directly affects cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity, and hydrogen. But, given its role as a generator of revenue for the thirsty EU government, it seems naïve to think taxation will finish there. The UK version of CBAM tax is set to come into effect in 2027.

What can you do about it?

Environmental regulations are not going away. Businesses that proactively address their carbon footprint and sustainability by implementing a solid management framework like ISO 14001 will be better positioned to compete, comply, and thrive in this changing landscape. ISO 14001 is recognised internationally as the current best practice for environmental management. Whether you choose to lead the way or wait until compliance is unavoidable, the time to start preparing is now.

The Allure of ISO Toolkits

Enter the Harsh reality: One size rarely fits all.

Toolkits simply don’t account for this level of flexibility so even your most basic implementation of any standard needs to be tailored in some degree to your business. This means you will end up having to sink a fair amount of time into reading and understanding the toolkit templates you’ve just bought and then you will still need to know what’s actually applicable to your business and what isn’t.

False Confidence

The Dark Abyss

We actually ended up having a customer come to us with a toolkit they’d bought from another company. They’d bought this ISO 27001 Toolkit, spent a substantial amount on it along with certification from a seller who turned out to be an unaccredited cert body (unaccredited bodies is a different conversation; and we’ll also ignore the clear conflict of interest from a cert body giving a customer a toolkit they themselves were then going to ‘assess’).

We eventually dubbed this the Dark Abyss of Toolkits. It was undoubtedly the worst kit I’d ever seen. The kicker though, our customer came to us because they didn’t have a clue how to fill out this toolkit or turn it into a manageable system; they’d initially contacted the sellers and asked for help. The toolkit sellers didn’t have anyone able to help their customer understand the documentation.

That certainly needs underlining and reiterating; the people selling the toolkit either wouldn’t or couldn’t help the buyers in understanding and filling it out.

When the dark abyss crossed my desk, I did my absolute best to help as much as possible. Obviously being a small family run business ourselves I also empathised with their plight.
We only charged a couple days for this job, when I quoted, I had no idea it was 360 documents.

I’d initially thought it would be a straight forward process, filling out the relevant sections for our customer. They stuck with this toolkit because they’d already invested and they had to submit the documentation back to this unaccredited body (our customer was locked into a 5-year contract with this purchase of a toolkit management system and certification).

In reality, I ended up spending 7-8 full days, deep-diving every document, pulling out what was useful and adding the information about my customer that the toolkit demanded. Whilst deep-diving I actually found the company name and Logo of a DIFFERENT toolkit seller buried a few pages in. The people who sold this toolkit to our customer actually also stole this toolkit from another company, tried to rebrand it and sold it without doing a detailed product review (maybe they should try and get some standards in place internally before trying to sell them?).

Final Musings and Takeaways

I bought an iPad for my wife. At the time, you couldn’t play Candy-Crush on an Apple device, so it lay in our bedroom untouched for months. Eventually, I took pity on it, loaded up Kindle, and it became my portable Library. It worked well, had a good enough battery life, and convinced me that I should give an iPhone a chance at some point.

Then, almost the next minute in my aging mind it had its seventh birthday. Over in California some Apple marketeer had decided it was time I bought another device. So they stopped supporting the software, and over a few weeks each app, and its operating system began to fail. The device can still be turned on, it still has a good battery life, but because no software will run on it; its only remaining use is being a paperweight.

Apple publicise very little about what’s inside an iPad, we know it has a Lithium-Ion battery, but the other rare minerals extracted from strange, exotic and often war-torn areas of the world remain a mystery. BUT, I’m not particularly against Apple, take a look at the links below and you’ll see the havoc caused throughout the world by all the big manufacturers of electronic devices:

But what’s the answer? Modern societies around the world would struggle to survive without electronics, and personally I think it unlikely that we’d willingly return to pre-industrial lifestyles. So there must be something that can be done?

But if something is rare, shouldn’t we be using what we have to the maximum before seeking more?

Forcing the purchase of new goods by manipulating the software, mandating millions of tons of working devices to be scrapped seems to me to be a huge waste.

Obtaining the necessary minerals has a huge and often irreparable environmental cost to the planet. If we accept that modern society can’t be sustained without the benefits these technologies provide, then surely, we should atleast use them for their maximum life span? Not allow some profit hungry company to build in automated obsolescence.

Also, if it’s not the planned obsolescence that makes your hardware unusable then it’s also the lack of replacement parts and lack of technical specs being supplied to approved repair companies. This is why you should also make yourself aware of the Right to Repair movements happening across the UK, US and other places around the world. ( https://therestartproject.org/right-to-repair/ )

When all the worlds’ leaders gather at Climate Conferences and other high-powered meetings, aren’t these just the type of issues they should be addressing? Aren’t world leaders the only people that can make and enforce laws to stop this type of thing, and isn’t that the reason for such conferences?

Or are there other reasons?
COP 28 Climate Change Conference

In November 2021 Boris Johnson made much publicity by hosting the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 26). The incompetence of governments and politicians is hardly new, but due to the serious nature of the current situation I am staggered by the level of incompetence environmental issue have now reached.

There are various calls for carbon reduction, but despite the millions of £’s spent on environmental issues and awareness, and the millions of miles politicians have flown to many many conferences on this subject, it hasn’t yet been agreed how carbon generation should be calculated. So at the moment you can probably claim whatever you want, as many company’s do. I hope their shareholders don’t have grandchildren as this could be quite difficult to explain.

As the pressure now builds on governments and multinational businesses to improve their performance to avoid fines, “Greenwashing” and “Carbon Offsetting” seem to be more popular than actually making improvements.

What a pity Boris’s conference did nothing to ban these two strategies, but sadly it looks like money wins again wisdom.

But further down the food chain SME’s are now being encouraged to make the changes the more powerful organisations are avoiding. Tools like ISO 14001 are a very cost effect way of managing down your carbon generation and potentially help saving the planet. What a pity that those with the cash to make a real difference are more interested in side stepping such a vital issue.

Have a look here for the failure being made:

Having been involved in Quality and Compliance since the early 80’s I sometimes wonder why we still get bad products and services, despite ISO 9001 et al.

One of the issues is definitely weak and inconsistent auditing from certification bodies. But I have a feeling that is inevitable with the way certification is set up in the UK: Certification bodies are not the same, despite their UKAS Accreditation, which is supposed to ensure conformity. My own experience suggests that often the more expensive the certification body, the harder the audits are to get through. Which gives a lot of incentive to spend as little as you can!

I’ve been visiting customers and suppliers for over 40 years. In the early days an auditor said to me “you know a good company within 10 minutes of entering”. Another offered “all companies reflect the personality of their managers”.

I dismissed the idea you could establish the quality of a company/potential supplier within ten minutes pretty much instantly. It’s too complex a situation, with too many variables, and of course, is dependent on your own circumstances.

However, I do think the influence of management on their own organisation is often overlooked or misunderstood, especially by themselves. If you want employees to do their best for you, to look after your customers and take care when delivering your company’s products or services, then your own attitude to these things and how you go about your daily work, becomes very important.

I’ve also come across “micro-managers” many times. People who give no real responsibility to their staff, but then complain that their staff show little commitment and never come up with improvements or suggestions. Why should they, if your attitude towards them gives the impression you just want obedient robots who do as they are told, nothing more or less?

Improving the quality or consistency of your products and services requires, in most cases, a change in the culture of your staff, and the only way you’ll get that is if you deliberately nurture and encourage all staff to take some sort of ownership for their work and position in the business, to take part and offer something more than mere obedience.