Case Studies

obelisk page logo

With offices in Cavan, Dublin, Belfast, England, Scotland and South Africa, Obelisk provide solutions and resources to industries across telecommunications, power transmission and distribution, renewable energy and tower infrastructure.

They are certified to ISO9001, ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 and in 2017, Obelisk asked Asgard Management Solutions to provide internal auditor training to 6 of their staff. We prepared the course content and over 3 days, we ran an in-house training course which included 3 key elements:

Overview of ISO9001, ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 – we spent 1 day giving a clause-by-clause overview of the standards to ensure that the attendees had an understanding of the requirements. We included several case studies and scenarios during this element to ensure full understanding and also engagement of the attendees during the session.
Auditing skills and techniques (theory) – day 2 involved the theory of auditing (why audit, what attributes are required in an auditor, what tools can be used, what problems can be encountered, how to record findings).
Practical auditing - the final day of the course involved the attendees conducting internal audits of their own IMS. This exercise gave the attendees experience in auditing, in a real-life environment. We selected areas for audit that were tangible and familiar, particularly for novice auditors, and this allowed the attendees to apply the skills they had developed over the previous days. We shadowed the auditors through their preparation, auditing and report writing and gave a debrief at the end of the session.

The internal audit team are now equipped with the skills they need to audit their systems, not only fulfilling their ISO obligations but ensuring the IMS remains an effective, relevant and beneficial management system.

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moore environmental page logo

Moore Environmental provide services including certification, validation, flushing, maintenance and other HVAC-related services, particularly in the pharma, healthcare, life sciences and IT sectors. Moore Environmental have been certified to ISO9001 for many years but felt that their QMS was cumbersome, difficult to administer and failing to deliver the benefits that the client required. The revision of ISO9001 to the 2015 version provided the perfect opportunity to completely strip the QMS back to the basics and rebuild it into a user-friendly and effective system.

We took the decision not to try to change the QMS but instead, we decided to park the old system and build an entirely new QMS. We began with the “context” exercise where we identified the issues, interested parties, scope and processes. We then determined the procedures that Moore Environmental felt that they need to ensure the effective operation of the processes. As they had a number of activity-specific SOPs which were effective, the necessity for other procedures was limited, so we decided to incorporate these new procedures within the quality manual. The manual, including procedures to address areas such as supplier control, document control, corrective action and training came to less than 20 pages.

As with all systems, once implemented, we let the system run and bed in and we returned a number of months later to conduct the internal audit. As well as the office element, the internal audit included site visits to 2 client sites where Moore employees were engaged in operational work. The internal audit issues were addressed and we were ready for our external audit. The client requested that we attend the external audit with them to ensure that things went smoothly. Being present at the audit meant that we could help the client interpret the auditor’s questions, and crucially, help explain our technical approach to the system and how we comply with the standard. The external audit took place over 2 days at the end of which, Moore Environmental were recommended for certification.

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national vehicle distribution page logo

NVD are Ireland’s leading car transport and logistics company with offices, compounds and/or workshops in New Ross, Baldonnell, Ringaskiddy, Kill and Rosslare. They have been certified to ISO9001 since 2003 and in 2013, they engaged Asgard Management Solutions to help add ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 to their certification through an integrated management system.

In December 2013, we started the process by conducting an operational control review of all locations. This purpose of this review was to identify at an early stage any significant HSE-related issues that may require investment or longer-term actions. The next step was to identify the environmental aspects and impacts related to their activities and to determine which of those were significant. These significant aspects then later formed the basis of the environmental objectives and improvement programme. The H&S risks and hazards were already identified through the company safety statement and again, significant hazards formed the basis of the H&S improvement programme.

We then set about documenting the system in line with ISO14001/OHSAS18001 documentation requirements. Our aim was to fully integrate these systems with the existing ISO9001 QMS and given the differences that existed in the standards at the time, this proved challenging but following the structure laid down in PAS99, we successfully drafted an IMS manual and supporting procedures. The new system operated for a period of approximately 3 months at which time we returned to conduct an internal audit of the system across all locations. We addressed the issues that arose during the audit, conducted a management review and were ready for our certification audit. The 9-day audit was a very thorough testing of the IMS but despite the pressures of the audit, NVD were certified to all 3 standards in early 2015.

We continue to work with NVD to the point where we now fulfil the role of SHEQ Manager within the organisation. This involves maintaining the IMS through monitoring and development, auditing the IMS across all sites throughout the year and growing the IMS in line with the rapid growth of the company. In addition, we successfully transitioned the ISO9001 and ISO14001 elements of their IMS to the 2015 versions at their recertification audit in November 2017.

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construction industry federation page logo

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.

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