Compliance company checked for compliance

DRLC is a family firm which supplies Authorising Engineering services to healthcare facilities. The company was formed in 2016 by managing, David Livingstone, and is run by he and his partner, Dr Louise Webb. Since founding the company in 2016 in Sheffield, the pair have increased DRLC’s range of services from initial ventilation work to encompass fire safety and pressure systems, water safety, confined spaces, and medical gases. DRLC also carries out Design Review services on new and refurbished healthcare projects. Recently it has been engaged in steam and boiler house surveys, and the development of engineering drawings of these legacy facilities. Another growth area has been the provision of clerk of works services to healthcare building projects.

Significant growth

The company has grown from two Directors in 2017 to a team of over 15 full- and part-time staff and associates in 2024. Any company experiencing this type of rapid growth will experience teething problems, and DRLC was no exception. The company was keen to streamline its procedures and align what it was doing day to day with best practice. It was also keen to meet the NHS Shared Business Services’ stringent requirements for acceptance onto the organisation’s procurement framework.

David Livingstone said: “I saw that we needed to start working towards an International Standard. I think that we can develop our company to enable us to be successfully assessed for ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. The ISO 9001 standard is a process improvement which will allow us to continually monitor, manage, and improve the quality of our services. We will use it as an effective business improvement tool to provide the guidance we need to enable us to consistently meet our clients’ expectations and regulatory requirements.”

He continued: “I am particularly keen on the ISO 14001 certificate. ISO 14001 is an internationally recognised framework for setting up an environmental management system (EMS). This shows that DRLC is committed to reducing the environmental impact of our company’s operations. We spend a lot of our time and effort advising and encouraging our NHS clients to reduce energy consumption and run their estates along sound environmental principles. We need to be looking at equivalent ways of reducing our carbon footprint.”

The ISO 9001 standard

ISO 9001 contains a set of Quality Principles, which include:

Customer focus — how is the organisation dealing with its clients?
Leadership — what are the Board and Directors and managers focusing on, and what tools and techniques are they using?
Engagement of people — what is the company culture, and is it consistent across the enterprise?
Process approach — are processes being used? Are they consistent? Are they continually checked and updated to reflect changes in the environment?
Continuous improvement — using starting point and improvement registers.
Evidence-based decision making — utilising tracking and registers developed either from scratch or improved as part of the process.
Relationship management — which is critical to all the above.

Under ISO 9001 there are numerous processes and procedures a company would be expected to follow. For example, companies are required to record their customers’ contact information and gather feedback during the customer engagement. Other processes and procedures which may be novel to many companies include keeping an error log, or implementing a final inspection procedure.

The process concentrates on continuous improvement. This is only measurable if you know where you are to start with, and the initial efforts for becoming compliant are mainly about finding out what the starting point for the organisation is.

ISO 14001 standard

The ISO 14001 standard sets the quality bar for environmental management systems. Organisations with the certification have been assessed on their commitment to reduce waste management costs and demonstrate their responsibility to protect the environment. The environmental standard is recognised worldwide, and assists organisations with compliance with increasingly demanding environmental regulations, and — in some cases — laws.

The process towards being assessed against these standards was not immediately obvious to DRLC. Dr Webb recalls the start of the journey for the business: “I had heard of the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards — I just didn’t appreciate what they actually entailed. It felt like we were being asked to ‘Make a Movie’ — a project type first described by Eddie Obeng in his book, The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook.1 This type of change is characterised by knowing where you are now, and where you want to end up, without knowing exactly how you are going to get from A to B. As a Project manager myself I knew that this project type could, similar to the development of a real movie, be incredibly expensive, and overrun the timescale. It seemed like a very big risk to our business if we got this wrong.”

DRLC’s Directors had a number of meetings to decide how to approach the task of applying for these ISO accreditations, and even whether to do it at all. Decision time came, and they took the next step towards accreditation by reviewing and selecting a Quality Consultant to advise and guide them through the quality gates imposed by ISO.

The agreement was made to look into Quality Consultants who could help with the process. It seemed important to DRLC that the consultant chosen was fairly local to its Sheffield head office, for a number of reasons — not least because this would reduce the carbon footprint of face-to-face meetings.

Richard Dolman of Glade Consulting Services was selected to assist with the process to accreditation and had his first meetings with DRLC in March 2023. Richard runs his own business, and had a number of things in common with DRLC — and particularly being a Small-to-Medium Enterprise (SME) in a business environment of much larger entities.

He said of his first impressions: “As with most companies we work with, DRLC was already in a great place operationally, but its business planning processes were not formalised in such a coherent way, and the business did not have any quality or environmental objectives in place. We also critiqued the way that communication worked in the business, especially with the interaction of the processes, and found opportunities to improve this.”

The DRLC and Glade Consulting teams then got to work to create a system which not only met the requirements of the two standards, but also helped the business to systematically improve its processes.

Working with the status quo

Richard Dolman added: “Our approach is always to work with the systems and information that the client already has in place; what we don’t want to end up with is a cumbersome management system which does not give any benefit to the company. David and Louise appreciated this approach, and it was a straightforward process working to a clearly defined goal.”

Of the unfolding of the process over time to ensure that ISO compliance is being met, he said: “For us it is always important to understand where the business has come from, and where it is going. ISO certification can be an important step on their journey and whilst, for many, it can be a box-ticking process, for DRLC it was important to get real value out of it — goals which we share. After we had worked on the business planning processes, we set objectives which were relevant to DRLC, and which are making an impact on how the business performs. We then undertook an internal audit of the processes to check that all was working as consistently as was intended at the outset. The last step before being audited by the certification body was to carry out a management review. This is often the one time in the year when directors create time and space for a ‘helicopter view’ of the business, and assess what has worked well, what hasn’t, and how can we improve it. This is the bedrock of Continual Improvement, and DRLC now has well-established processes which have been embedded across the organisation.”

Implementing the process

Implementing the new expanded Quality Management System (QMS) in the company involved several strategic steps designed to enhance operational efficiency and ensure that DRLC continued to provide consistent Authorising Engineer service quality. The first — securing top management commitment — had already been achieved, as such personnel’s support is crucial for resource allocation and cultural alignment. The next milestone was to conduct a thorough assessment of the current processes to identify areas which are deemed to require improvement.

The key to implementing a quality policy that lasts and improves the way a company performs is to develop a clear and comprehensive quality policy and objectives aligned with the company’s objectives and culture. DRLC thus established a cross-functional team to design and document standardised procedures, using support from Glade Consulting to ensure that these procedures comply with ISO 9001. When these were in place, the Directors of DRLC organised a training day for all staff to educate them about their roles within the new Quality Management System.

The key to effective use of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 is that once implemented they are continuously monitored and measured. Regular audits and performance reviews are the mechanism that allow non-conformities to be addressed in a timely fashion. The key phrase that encapsulates the system is ‘continuous improvement’ — by encouraging feedback and making iterative enhancements based on data and discussion with relevant stakeholders.

David Livingstone says he is delighted the company is now ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 accredited. He reflected: “We are now running the company using our Quality Manual, which has passed accreditation for ISO quality and environmental. I am hugely proud of the DRLC team, who have worked tirelessly to enable us to be in this position. We decided to employ a Compliance Administrator to check the quality of our client reports, and that is already providing a lot of useful feedback and concomitant improvements. We now regularly review and update the Quality Manual to adapt to changing market demands and regulatory requirements, particularly with the latter — because as compliance consultants we have to be up to date with the relevant regulations. I am sure going forward the process we have gone through will ensure sustained quality and improved customer satisfaction.”

Looking to the future

DRLC will continue to utilise the ISO quality system as a foundational framework for maintaining high standards across all operations. A critical component of this approach involves the development and maintenance of a comprehensive reference library, which will house documented evidence of feedback received, along with the corresponding actions taken and their outcomes. This library will serve as a repository for ‘Lessons Learnt’ logs, capturing valuable insights and experiences from past projects and interactions.

These logs will be systematically reviewed and analysed on a regular 
basis, ensuring that the information is current and actionable. By examining patterns and trends in feedback, the Directors and delivery teams will be able to identify recurring issues, successful strategies, and areas needing improvement. This continuous learning process will inform decision-making and strategic planning, guiding efforts to enhance service quality.

The insights gained from the ‘Lessons Learnt’ logs will be used to refine processes, develop best practices, and implement corrective actions where necessary. This proactive approach to quality management will not only address existing challenges, but also prevent potential issues from arising in the future. By fostering a culture of continuous improvement, DRLC aims to increase customer satisfaction, boost client retention, and build a reputation for reliability and excellence. Richard Dolman sums this up thus: “In my experience you don’t absolutely need ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 to run a quality organisation which cares about the environment, but it certainly helps.”

Reference

1 Obeng E. All change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook. Financial Times Prentice Hall. 31 July 1996.