"I Don't Much Care For Audits"

In recent months the BEMS business has been involved in two rigorous external audits, both testing and examining our business processes. ISO9001:2015 is an international quality standard that focuses on our processes and procedures that assures our customers they will receive consistent and quality services. The other audit was conducted by Achilles. Originally, it was centred on safety but over the last few years, it has incorporated quality, customer experience, processes and document control, and business resilience. Again, this is a recognised accreditation that demonstrates to our customers the level of service we strive to achieve. Without these standards, each customer would have to undertake their own audits of us – representing a huge amount of work on all sides. I’ve been involved in many audits over the years but I have to admit the Achilles audit was particularly tough as it went into a lot of detail with plenty of evidential material required. It wasn’t one of those audits that simply checks the policy documents are in date! Although, there was a bit of that in there as well! The audit examined that the Smart Buildings team live and breathe the business processes that are in place and that suitable evidence is in place to demonstrate that. In case you’re wondering, we passed! In fact, we did rather well:

ISO9001:2015

• non-conformances

• 9 positive observations

Achilles

• 1 minor non-conformance
• 3 suggestions
• 2 positive observations

Beind this success stands a great team. Truth be told, it’s the team that deserves the credit and in recognition, I did start to write their names below. I realised on the twelfth name that I was only partially through the list and couldn’t possibly mention everyone so I’ve now reverted to simply saying ‘thank you’ to all of those involved. I started by stating that I don’t like audits. Well, I still don’t but strangely I enjoyed these for two reasons:

1. I’m proud of the accreditation. It feels well-earned.
2. I knew we were prepared. Not just leading up to the audits but all of the hard work over the last few years.

The only minor negative was the one non-conformance but we’ll make sure to fix that before the next audit.