Thursday 15 February 2018

A key strategic objective to deliver critical management system certifications that enable the NNL business to function has been achieved – ahead of target and with a number of stellar performances.

NNL’s integrated management system, which defines our arrangements for Environmental, Health, Safety, Security and Quality management, is the management system validated by external assessments which prove that the way NNL operates conforms to internationally accepted standards. Without the external certificates of approval, businesses would not meet the stakeholder requirements which allow them to operate.

Changes to two of the international standards in 2015 – the Quality (ISO 9001) and Environmental (ISO 14001) management system standards – required that all companies holding these approvals be reassessed against new, updated criteria within three years of the changes being introduced.

In NNL, this work was identified as being a priority for the business and was identified as a strategic objective to be completed during 2017/18, in good time for the September 2018 deadline set by the ISO. To achieve this, all processes, policies and procedures relating to NNL’s quality and environmental management needed review, assessment against the new ISO standards and amendment where changes or gaps were identified to meet the new requirements.

Carrie Stewart, who led on delivering the work to do this, announced this week that this work has been completed and with fantastic success.

She said: “The technical review (LRQA’S assessment of our systems) been returned and I am absolutely delighted to report that not only have our management system arrangements been approved to the new standards, but that this has been achieved 9 months ahead of the target. Not only that, it was achieved with no notifications of non-conformity from the assessment process which we’re given to understand is very unusual.”

Keith Johnson, NNL’s Assurance Director, said: “The NNL Executive team recognised last year the importance of NNL being early adopters of the new ISO standards.  This provides external validation of our management systems in both quality and environment. We set a stretch target of receiving uplift to the new version in both standards this financial year and we are delighted that this has been achieved.  This is a fantastic achievement by team and everyone who were involved in the assessment.”