The Construction Industry Federation manage the Safe-T-Cert scheme which is a health and safety scheme for the construction sector in Ireland. The operation of the scheme is certified to ISO9001 and in January 2018, Asgard Management Solutions were retained to transition the ISO9001:2008 QMS to ISO9001:2015. The project was completed in 4 days:
- Day 1 – Training session with CIF staff on the ISO9001:2015 standard. This involved a clause-by-clause review to ensure that the client had a full understanding of the requirements of the standard.
- Day 2 – Context of the organisation. This was an exercise in identifying internal issues, external issues and interested parties relevant to the QMS with a view to determining the associated risks and opportunities. Once these were determined, we set about identifying the current controls and determining where further controls were required. We also developed plans for the realisation of the identified opportunities.
- Day 3 – Process mapping. We identified the processes within the QMS and set about determining the inputs, outputs, resources, responsibilities, KPIs and monitoring mechanisms. We also identified risks and opportunities similar to the coverall “context” exercise.
- Day 4 – We rewrote the Quality Manual in line with the ISO9001:2015 standard. While a manual is no longer mandatory within ISO9001, it is a hugely beneficial document when used as a roadmap to the QMS and we encourage all clients who are certified or considering certification to include a manual in their QMS. The development of the manual also allowed us to address the other areas of change with ISO9001 including quality objectives, organisational knowledge, work environment and corrective action.
At the end of the project, the CIF not only had a system that was fully compliant with ISO9001:2015, but by undertaking the initial training and also being completely involved in the transition, they were left with a deep understanding of the standard and how their own system complied with the requirements.
