Prestigious awards confirming Great Yarmouth’s environmental and quality management credentials are set to boost the port’s international reputation.
Alex Woods formally received the ISO 9001 quality management and ISO 14001 environmental systems certification at the port’s recent stakeholder meeting from Michael Bright, Managing Director of International Management Systems Marketing (IMSM).
Mr Woods said: “Reaching these standards certainly helps when we are talking to international companies, particularly as the energy industry is very keen on environmental performance. After achieving the awards, the difficult part now is maintaining the standard and ensuring that, when the external audit is done in the summer of 2007, we maintain the standard.”
He paid tribute to IMSM and QAS International, who he said were “extremely helpful in guiding us through the practicalities of the standard and preparing the manuals on our behalf.” Gaining environmental certification was a matter of building on the work the port had done over the years to deal with the environmentally sensitive issues that all ports face.
For the management standard his task had mainly involved formalising work done previously on best practice in the quality system and bringing procedures together in a format that met the quality standard. IMSM provides management systems, with a fast track, fixed fee solution, helping 5,500 organisations worldwide to achieve ISO certification.
The standards include:
ISO 9001 (Quality), IS0 14001
(Environmental), OHSAS 18001
(Health & Safety) and ISO27001
(Information Technology).
Internationally recognised management systems tell customers, prospects and suppliers worldwide that a company works to a logical and documented process.
Such systems improve efficiency, reduce waste, and increase market opportunities significantly, and affect every aspect of the organisation – raising standards, improving effectiveness and enhancing business performance. For many businesses and organisations, holding these standards is a requirement of the supply chain.
He concluded: “From our perspective it was really a case of rounding the corners off rather than having to go back and reinvent the wheel in any shape or form. It went very smoothly with them because they were a very responsive and well-organised outfit.”
