The Initial Idea

Following on from a business plan meeting with Rob and our decision to go for more Public Sector work we decided that we needed to get some official recognition of the extensive systems Cake employs to run a project and any ensuing maintenance contract. I contacted Chamber Enterprises who set up a meeting with Mike Potts in early August 2005. I needed to see what the options were and of course find out the costs.

The Initial Meeting

The initial meeting with Mike Potts from Chamber Enterprises happened late August. He advised us that the best and most widely recognised award was the ISO9001 standard (the Public sector apparently love it! ). The costs were discussed and we even qualified for a grant towards the cost of the consultancy fees we would have to pay to a company to guide us through the process. Business enterprises carried out a business evualuation to ensure we qualified and received the grant.

Mike also provided us with details of three consultants who were approved by Business Link to help us through the process of schieving ISO 9001. From that list we chose Malcolm Seaton with whom we arranged an initial meeting to meet him and for him to talk us through what would be required.

Meeting Malcolm

We initially met Malcolm late August and he talked us through what the ISO 9001 requirements were. We also introduced Malcolm to the team and showed him the systems we employed as well as some examples of our clients and our work. The good new is that his initial diagnosis that we are not a million miles away from having the sytstems and procedures in place already to achieve the standard.

On the 20th of February two auditors from the Centre for Assessment visited the Cake office to audit our processes and systems to see if they met the stringent ISO 9001 standard. I must confess not looking forward to the day having being warned that everything would be scrutinized in microscopic detail. Although the day was far from relaxing I was pleasantly surprised as to how easy the auditors were to work with and even though they were very thorough they were also very helpful and constructive.

We managed to get through the day with no non-compliances and just eight observations. This meant that although it was recommended that we addressed the observations they were relatively minor issues and did not constitute a non compliance. The auditors therefore recommended that we receive the ISO 9001 accreditation. This didn’t not guarantee we receive the award, the notes from the day have to be presented to an independent panel who make the final decision. I am pleased to say 1 week after the assessment day we receive conformation we had been approved.

In summary I would recommend ISO 9001 for any company wanting to improve their in house systems, as over all the improvements to our processes and systems will be a benefit to all our clients and make Cake a better company to do business with. It is also worth noting that if you approach your local Business Enterprise unit there are sometimes grants available to help with the consultancy fees that provide invaluable help in achieving this award.

There are only three working days, including today, until our ISO 9001 assessement day. Most of the work has been completed just a little fine tuning needed now. Malcolm has just been in and audited our audits as well as looking at the changes that we have made since his visit last week. We have had a few non conformities and observations added to our problems and complaints spreadsheet that will need to be addressed before the end of the week, but overall Malcolm seems to be confident we have all the necessary processes in place to ensure we get through the big day!

Earlier today we had our first Management Review Meeting which is part of the ISO 9001 system. With Malcolm chairing the meeting Sharen, Rob and I sat down to review our processes and systems in line with the ISO standards. The review is made up of a number of sections which include;

There were a number of actions which came out of the meeting but the overall feeling was that the Cake and its systems and processes were moving forward in the right direction. One of the benefits of ISO 9001 is that it makes you take a step back and think about key areas of your business sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the day to day issues that this essential task can be overlooked or not reviewed as often as it should be. We will be conducting a Management Review on a quarterly basis as it ensures that you do take a long hard look at key areas of the business on a regular basis.

Malcolm was in today to check on progress. We have only completed 1 audit since his last vist, the QP6 System Maintenance audit. This is my first attempt at an audit. It didn’t take too long, around 2 hours, to complete the audit, write the summary report and add the information to the problems and complaints checklist. When Malcolm looked at it there were a a couple of things I had got mixed up on but I think the next ones we do will be easier now from a procedural point of view.

Sharen has updated Sage with comments on all of our suppliers as well as blocking the accounts of suppliers we are not happy with. This will ensure we do not use these accounts unless we make the decision to revise that decision.

I have been busy adding all of the ISO documents to Confluence so they are readily available to all of our team internally. Sharen has logged and numbered all of these documents so we can keep control of them and be aware of any updates to them.

Malcolm has provided us with an updated ISO 9001 manual with alterations to the steps we follow to ensure on time and a high quality delivery of completed projects.