And in the real world BLOG
In the real world it is all about context. What do you do? Why do you do it? At quality.com.au (QCA) we have both of these on our home page on the web. We also have it in every newsletter we send out.
However, it needs to be a little more specific than that when it comes to our certifications, professional indemnity and our intellectual property insurances. So in that space we document and retain in our myQuality portal to ensure the directors and our interested parties are on the same page.
At quality.com.au we claim to design, develop and implement quality management systems. We are even certified to ISO 9001 to do so. Nice huh!
Let me remind you (because it is worth it), at quality.com.au we claim to design, develop and implement quality management systems. We are even certified to ISO 9001 to do so. Nice huh!
Our controls are the contracts, checklists and quality plans we develop as part of the project plan. Next our design outputs are subjected to internal audits, external audits and even peer review as EVERY project has an assigned project director to ensure all facets of every project is delivered.
Our current certification provider is Global-Mark. They primarily use subcontractor external auditors. They do have employee external auditors, but they a small in number. Do we care if the external auditor is employee or subcontractor? No. But we do know and that ensures transparency.
Our current auditor is a Global-Mark employee. He has a great technical knowledge of the three standards we are certified to (soon to be four) and has grown in expertise with his understanding of commercial reality and the simplicity of small business. And we are not easy to audit either.
At quality.com.au we have many interested parties, many internal and external requirements, many external providers who provide products and services for the delivery of our strategic plans, quality objectives, risk management and, of course our quality management systems delivery to our clients.
Here are at quality.com.au we follow a strict formula to ensure what our clients want (whether they know it or not) and what they get align, and align with a great deal of accuracy.
A big call? You bet. When you retain our SaaS product (myQuality) and our services (design, implement, certify and support), there cannot be any surprises.
We like walking the talk. We have a register. We have a ‘rolling’ review that checks the data. We table the data and the results in management review. And we tweak the whole process at each milestone.
Overall, we have 9 objectives. Two each for quality, environment and safety. We have 3 dealing with strategic objectives. So, the 2 quality objectives deal with continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. Go figure right!
Split off from them are 3 (in total) programs that have dedicated resources, targets and ample records to show what we have achieved.
There are many key elements in this clause and most are the requirements of Fair Trading in Australia, good governance in commercial risk, best practice in customer communication and tight-as with regard binding contracts and deliverables.
Well we were treated the same as any of our clients. No significant difference during the documentation review (aka audit), precertification review (conducted simultaneously with the document review), the certification review was quick and to the point and every other post certification review over the last 24 years. Yes, you read right. 24 plus years we have been walking the talking. Currently three standards of 9001, 14001 and 45001 and soon 27001. We do present some challenges to our certification providers and in particular some hardship for our auditors, because we do things just a little different.
In the real world it is all about context. In our business, we were like everyone else way back last century. We offered far more than we would like to do, but in order to make ends meet, we took on more and more until we finally burnt out resources or decided not to live with the lack of gross margin.
We were then ‘lucky’ enough to realise a cash flow that enabled us to niche and to focus on what we did, what we did well and what we wanted to do. In particular it was to make quality certification easy and to make it available to any business.
I am often asked this question. The provider we currently choose and trust to provide quality.com.au with certification to ISO 9001, 14001, 45001 and soon 27001 is Global-Mark. We have been a client of Global-Mark since the day Herve Michoux (Managing Director) opened his doors for business (circa 2007). They made the transfer process from our previous provider seamless and painless with no extra fees. We like their personnel, processes, back office support and automation, ensuring we get what we deserve from a certification provider.