The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) is the body responsible for enforcing the UK law, with powers to fine website owners up to £500,000 for serious breaches in the law.

We have already had our site scanned and are proud to say that we have been given 5 stars,  with only 4 cookies being listed.

to see our site score please click HERE

Mark Pendleton

Chamber Expos have developed a reputation for showcasing a diverse and exciting array of businesses, giving all attendees an excellent opportunity to develop strong business partnerships.

The Hereford event offers an opportunity for all businesses, regardless of membership to the Chamber, to come and meet new suppliers, forge new partnerships, share knowledge and best practice, and obtain valuable advice and information.

Chamber of Commerce Herefordshire Business Expo 2012

Their customers include many Local Government Authorities and Water Utilities as well private contractor customers in the UK and World Wide.

Tankers are built on truck chassis from a range of manufacturers and in a range of sizes.

By October 2014 the new European Whole Vehicle Type Approval system will be in place for commercial vehicles and as part of this, the company needed to be able to achieve approval for what is known as ‘Conformity of Production’. ISO 9001 certification is central to achieving this.

Fuller Tankers retained Equas to help them towards ISO 9001 certification.   In February 2011, using the ISO in a Box™ system, the company successfully achieved their certification. The Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) was chosen as the Certification Body for ISO 9001 and is also the Certification body for the Type Approvals.

Shortly after becoming certified to ISO 9001:2008 the company became a supplier on the Achilles UVDB, which is recognised as the standard approach to pre qualification in the Utilities Sector.  The ISO system aided significantly in this and the effort was quickly repaid through Fuller Tankers gaining an order from Welsh Water for several vehicles!

Work was begun in early 2011, in co-operation with Volvo Trucks to build a new Recycler Tanker to be submitted for European Whole Vehicle Type Approval,  the base vehicle being a Volvo FH 420 HP Euro 5, 6 x 2 rear steer and lift axle with a Globetrotter Cab.

Testing by the VCA included a physical test of certain components.  The finished pre-production vehicle was eventually delivered to the VCA test house for examination.  Checks were made on masses & dimensions, positions of lights, lateral protection and rear underrun protection etc. Components were checked for Type Approvals and the full Type Approval documentation for the Volvo Truck was submitted for checking.

During this period Fuller Tankers was successfully granted Conformity of Production by the VCA, through the ISO 9001 certification and examination of the company’s Control Plans and other documentation for production.

The result was full certification of European Whole Vehicle Type Approval which was received in Mid-February 2012.  This is the first vehicle of its type to achieve the Approval and is thus a great achievement for the company.

The vehicle is now the company’s demonstrator.  It will be exhibited at the Commercial Vehicle Show at the NEC between 24^th and 26^th April (on stand 3F58).

The company now plans to extend Type Approvals across its range.

Equas continues to support Fuller Tankers in the operation of their ISO 9001 Quality Management System, to achieve continual improvement throughout their operations.

Funding for the work of Hafal comes from a range of private and public funders and the company operates in a regulated care environment.  The decision was made that Hafal should obtain certification to ISO 9001 as a further measure of the quality of the service provided.

Alun Thomas the Deputy Chief Executive of Hafal, chose Equas’s ISO in a Box™ system and the consultancy support that comes with it as the preferred method of achieving the required certification.

The Hafal quality management system was successfully audited and certified to ISO 9001 in January 2012.

Alun Thomas gave the following testimonial: “Mark Pendleton of Equas provided supportive and flexible guidance which was a great help in assisting Hafal to achieve ISO 9001 certification to this internationally recognised standard.”

www.hafal.org

Sulzer Metco’s Stalybridge operation deals in the coating and enhancing of surfaces. It produces materials and equipment for these purposes and develops machining processes for special components. The company’s state of the art products, solutions and services are delivered through a global sales, customer support and manufacturing network.

The company commissioned Equas in May 2010 to create a Quality, Environmental and Health & Safety Management System in order to achieve UKAS-accredited certification to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001. Work on the project began in July 2010 and full certification was achieved in January 2011.

Sulzer Metco chose to have their Management System built using the Activ Online Management System and the work was carried out by Julian Russell, a Director of Equas and a Lead Auditor for all three Standards.

Warren Selby, the company’s Health and Safety Officer who was responsible for the project, gave the following feedback:

“I would like to thank you for your support and excellent service over the past 6 – 7 months in helping our site achieve certification to ISO9001:2008, ISO 14001:2004 and OHSAS 18001:2007 Your consultant acted with professionalism and patience and he was prompt, polite and most helpful at all times.

The service proved invaluable to our company, helping us set up and maintain the Quality, Environmental and Health & Safety Management systems using your internet based Activ System. This has already proved to be an extremely important tool and was highlighted by our Certification Auditor in his final audit report as being “a very robust and excellently documented, easy to follow management system”.

“We have received, and are continuing to receive, excellent added value from our relationship with Equas and I will definitely recommend them to other organisations” said Warren.

The company’s link to the University of Sheffield provides it with a number of unique capabilities:

• specialist technical expertise
• state of the art research and support facilities
• highly valued independence and impartiality

As a multi-disciplinary consultancy, ECUS offer its clients a unique, integrated, team approach to project management with in-house expertise in a wide range of technical areas. Their approach has benefited clients through cost and time savings and the provision of added value to environmental projects.

Equas was commissioned in February 2008 to build an ISO compliant Quality Management System for certification to ISO 9001. During the creation of this system the ECUS added a requirement for ISO 14001 to the project. The combined Quality and Environmental Management System was completed by David Morgan, a Director of Equas and certified Lead Auditor, in September 2009 and certified to ISO 9001 by a UKAS-accredited Certification Body in the same month. Certification to ISO 14001 was delayed, at the client’s request, until November 2010.

Chris Routh, ECUS’s Managing Director, gave the following feedback:

“In November 2010, ECUS Ltd was successfully certified against ISO 14001, adding this qualification to our existing ISO 9001 certification. This is a major step forward for us and I can honestly say that I cannot imagine completing the process without the Activ software and system. The thought of having to develop and run both a quality and environmental management system without web-based software is unimaginable now! We are making improvements to the way we do things all the time and with Activ we can make the changes and disseminate information to all our staff instantaneously, and all the amendments are tracked and logged. It would be a nightmare with a paper-based system.”

Thought to be one of the oldest printing companies in the UK and still owned by direct descendants of William Pollard, it is now a highly sophisticated operation using the latest technology and employing around 75 staff.

The company achieved the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 ‘double’ using the ‘ISO in a Box’ system. Allan Moxey is Pollard’s Works Director, responsible for quality, the environment, health and safety and facilities management of its campus, part of which is rented out to other organisations.

“We’d been thinking about ISO 14001 for some time,” said Allan. “When filling in tender documents, there was always the question ‘do you have ISO 14001?’ or ‘do you intend to get ISO 14001?’ Reading between the lines, intending to get it wasn’t good enough. So although we were kind of forced into doing it, we knew we had a duty to raise our environmental standards.”

After speaking with the Equas  consultant, Pollards elected to do both Standards together. “ISO in a Box is tailored to deliver exactly what we need as a business,” said Allan. “We didn’t need to change any of our existing systems – it all slotted together but did make us more efficient. It’s really lived up to expectations and the consultant was an incredible help in keeping me on track. I’d definitely recommend it to any other business.”

Although the printing industry is making real progress in new technologies such as environmentally friendly chemistry, including vegetable-based inks and high spec recycled papers, they’ve not yet been perfected for general use.” There are still some quality issues to be overcome,” explained Allan. “What we are doing now is to ensure we recycle and recover as many of the elements used in the print process as possible such as ink, chemicals, aluminium plates, paper, card, wood and all plastics.”

The new environmental focus has encouraged everyone in the organisation to play their part and the volume of waste has been greatly reduced. “We still have a waste skip on site that is shared by our tenants. Over the last couple of months, we’ve halved the size of the skip and instead of being emptied every week, it’s now every three weeks. The volume going to landfill has been reduced by 80% which saves £400 a month,” said Allan.

“We’re lucky that our tenants share Pollard’s philosophy and have their own recognised Quality and Environmental Standards. In theory, we should be able to dispense with anything going to landfill and that’s our target.”

Joanna Chambers, Meteorological Observer

Is it true that we’re set for wet weather if cows lie down? “No, cows are unreliable – seaweed is much better,” said Tony Pallot and as Principal Meteorological Officer at the Jersey Meteorological Department, he knows what he’s talking about. He’s joking of course. Forecasting the weather is a highly technical and sophisticated science and Tony and his colleagues get it right the vast majority of the time.

They are based at Jersey Airport and provide 24/7 Met services for the Channel Islands Control Zone – Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney – plus any aircraft flying through the zone below 18,000 feet.

Part of the requirement of the International Civil Aviation Organisation is that any supplier of services for aviation needed to have a recognised Quality Management System in place by the end of 2010. The ‘Single European Sky’ initiative, which aims to harmonise the regulation of airspace, quickly followed suit. But it was Jersey Airport, the Met department’s main client that was the motivating factor.

Tony explained: “Jersey Airport gave us a deadline to have a system in place by July 2010, which gave us just eight weeks. The system that was going to tick all their boxes was ISO 9001. All I had to do was find someone to help us – quickly.”

An internet search brought up ISO in a Box along with other Quality Management consultants. “I fired emails off to a few of them and Equas phoned back very quickly, which told me they were very customer focused,” said Tony. “I liked what they told me about ISO in a Box, especially the fact that they could work to our tight deadline.”

Just seven weeks after the initial meeting with the Equas consultant, Jonathan Lea, Jersey Met department had its ISO 9001 certification.

“Jonathan was really positive but he did warn me that neither of us would be getting many weekends off. I even ended up taking my laptop on holiday, which didn’t impress my wife too much. The whole process was very straightforward and Equas continued with excellent customer service all the way through.”

The day after the successful external audit, Jonathan was at the airport ready to leave the island but all planes were grounded because of fog – which had, of course, been accurately forecasted!

CEO Peter Fowler

Westminster Group Plc includes in its Mission Statement the following phrase: “Westminster believes all citizens of the world have a right to personal safety, security and freedom from the threat of terrorist attack”. Mission statements are more often than not actually vision statements; ‘this is what we would like to do but we haven’t actually got there yet’. However, Westminster’s mission really is at the heart of its business, providing non-aggressive defence systems and equipment to authorised governments, multi nationals and the military to help protect personnel, facilities and national security.

The company has a truly global reach and clients include governments and blue chip organisations worldwide, such as the Royal Navy, US Air Force, the European Parliament, United Nations, MOD, Barclays Bank, The Atomic Energy Agency and even Amazon, the on-line retailer Westminster operates in over 45 countries with international offices and has a network of more than 80 agents (not the 007 ‘special agent’ variety!).

Operating in so many of the world’s ‘hot spots’ keeps the staff at Westminster very busy. They needed ISO 9001 to be able to demonstrate to their customers that they were running the business within a recognised quality framework – and they needed it quickly.

Peter Fowler is the company’s CEO: “I’ve been involved with ISO over a number of years, right back to the days of BS5750. I know how time consuming it can be to try and build ISO 9001 in house and frankly, we didn’t have that luxury. We searched around for a company that we felt could deliver the right level of service,” said Peter.

“We are expanding rapidly and acquiring other businesses outside the UK so it was also important that our quality management system could be integrated globally. The Equas consultant, Jonathan Lea, gave us a very good presentation and we could see that ISO in a Box would tick all the right boxes for us.

“He literally took the problem off our hands. Obtaining our certification was a smooth process; the Activ Online system works very well and is easy to manage – the software makes life much easier.

“I have to say that Jonathan’s sales pitch was very good but in truth, the implementation was even better,” concluded Peter.

Receptionists Diane Morse and Pauline Waterman

‘ISO in a Box’ was originally launched by Equas as a simple and cost-effective tool to help SMEs achieve ISO 9001 certification. Since then a number of sector-specific versions have been developed for industries including waste management, security – and even concrete repairers.

Now ‘ISO in a Box’ has proved to be the right prescription for Blackthorn Health Centre, which is part of the Hampshire Primary Care Trust. The healthcare sector has a number of very specific requirements that need to be integrated within its quality management system, as Angela Felton, system administrator at Blackthorn explained: “Things like medical directives, protocols and guidelines for our GPs are part of our working lives.

“We needed the system to incorporate all of this. I think that ISO 9001 is based more on business requirements and we wanted it to work for us, rather than us having to adapt to it, so it was a learning curve for both organisations.

“ISO in a Box provided the fundamentals – the building blocks on which we could expand and we received our certification back in January. Our pre-audit was especially useful and the lady from the UKAS-accredited audit body, who carried it out, was brilliant and gave us some pointers where we could make things more measurable. “We didn’t need to get ISO 9001 but it was what the GPs wanted because we carry out a lot of our work under the Quality Outcomes Framework, which is moving towards a business management style.

“Now we’re a few months down the line, people are becoming more confident in using it and it’s much easier to access the information they need. Every day, I get emails from people suggesting what new documents need to be added so it’s evolving all the time – ISO in a Box was definitely the right way to go,” said Angela.

The Equas consultant working with Blackthorn Health Centre is David Morgan. He said: “Every client’s business is unique and Blackthorn was a first for us as we hadn’t previously worked with a General Practice, although we already had considerable experience in the healthcare sector.

“The staff were extremely helpful in sharing information, working with us to tailor ISO in a Box to meet their requirements and, through their help, I’m confident that ISO in a Box now offers significant advantages for the healthcare sector.”