The (BS) numbers game

Another day and yet another set of seemingly randomly generated numbers to which we must conform. The security industry, like many other sectors, is heavily regulated with an ever-increasing volume of new requirements coming into force.

Depending on the nature of your operation, UK security companies will potentially be required to achieve the following British Standards should Business Licensing come into play :

– BS 7858: Security screening of all individuals that are employed in a security environment where the security and/or safety of people, goods and services, personal data or property is a requirement of the employer’s operation and/or where such security is in the public interest and/or corporate interest

– BS 8507-1: Recommendations for the management, staffing and operational accountability for the provision of all aspects of Close Protection services within the UK, Northern Ireland and Crown Dependencies

The list goes on and on; for instance if you are in the business of providing Investigative Services, the number you need is BS 102000. For Door Supervisors it’s BS 7960, Event Stewarding is BS 8406, and so on. Where do they get these numbers from?

The task of complying with the various Standards may appear to be an onerous one. However, there is one further number that vastly simplifies the process and that number is 9001.

ISO 9001 is the most widely adopted Quality Management Standard (QMS) in the world. The maxim is that your QMS should be build around the business and not around the Standard itself. It should be easy to maintain and set up in such a manner that staff will comply with it just by doing their job. This ensures that you remain focused on the needs of your business rather than compliance itself.

ISO 9001 provides a robust framework for improving every organisation’s performance by adopting the 8 Quality Management Principles:

• Customer focus
• Leadership
• Involvement of people
• Documented processes
• Integrated systems
• Continual improvement
• A factual approach to decision making
• Mutually beneficial supplier relationships

Having an ISO 9001-certified QMS in place delivers massive business benefits, not least that it enables organisations to keep abreast of their legal requirements and implement effective measures to minimize the risk of business interruption or loss of reputation.

Organisations with the certification are far more likely to win new business than non-certified competitors as it sends a very strong signal that the business is well managed and credible.

Most importantly, a tailored ISO 9001 system will ensure compliance with all the various British Standards (BS) that apply to your business.

In addition to ensuring compliance, achieving and maintaining the ISO 9001 Standard can lead to reduced insurance costs as these businesses are recognized as having appropriate processes and controls in place that reduce risk.

The updated version of the ISO 9001 Standard is due to come into force by the
end of 2015. Although organisations will have a transition period of three years after 2015 to update their systems, the BBA’s compliance partner, Equas Ltd, is working hard to ensure they are market-ready with the new versions that will be fully compliant with the update.

One of the obvious changes that users will see is that there will now be greatly simplified language that makes is easier to understand the requirements of the updated Standard. That in itself is pretty impressive, given that 60 countries are collaborating of the project.

After 2008 and the financial meltdown, it became apparent that many businesses only paid lip service to risk management and that it didn’t feature highly on the Boardroom agenda. The new ISO 9001:2015 version addresses this by forcing organisations to identify and effectively manage risk – a beneficial outcome of which is greater visibility of opportunity. There is a strong correlation between risk and responsibility and there is a new emphasis on having the senior management team far more involved in identifying risk and proactively contributing to the Quality Management System.

Having ISO 9001 certification delivers many benefits to your business – and it says a lot about you. For the security industry, it also ticks the required boxes for you to meet the new Security Industry British Standards requirements.

Working with its expert partner company, the BBA is developing a tailor-made version of an ISO 9001-compliant Quality Management System where the scope of the certification describes and encompasses all relevant British Standards required by individual BBA member companies.

The BBA ‘ProActiv™’ system, supported by compliance-industry experts Equas Ltd, will provide a web-hosted, personally tailored Quality Management System that is built to be an exact working replica of your business. This tailor-made system will ensure UKAS-accredited ISO 9001 certification
and full ongoing compliance support,
including:

• Quality Management System-building support
• Your own secure area in the BBA ProActiv™ Online Management System
• Internal Audits on a required basis
• The External (UKAS-accredited) Certification Audit for ISO 9001
• Annual UKAS Surveillance Audits
• A world-class document storage and retrieval system, hosted by one of the most secure server farms in the UK
• Automatic data back-up and document version control to all authorised users.….. and it supports access
to information for the entire workforce, customers and suppliers, no matter where they are located.