Rapiergroup’s new certified ISO processes start delivering on stakeholder’s requirements

As reported last year Rapiergroup’s two year development of a fully integrated management system, compliant with ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 20121 and OHSAS 18001, was rewarded with independent certification to the four standards from UKAS accredited body AJA Registraars.

Perhaps the most important part of each of the standards, between them spanning health and safety, sustainability and customer experience processes, is stakeholder – or “interested party” consultation and collaboration. This means working to understand our customers’, employees’, suppliers’, venue and event organising partners’, enforcing authorities’ and other relevant party’s wants and needs and trying to ensure our practices align as closely as possible with them whilst staying true to our own core values and principles.

And although still at a relatively early stage our management system and engagement processes have already identified and started to address the following topics, raised both internally and externally.

Documentation refinements

• Our projects are complex and to some extent our documentation and audit trail need to reflect that, however following our latest cross-departmental process working group further enhancements to our core “project record” have been suggested and incorporated that will add operational value whilst also making the completion and maintenance of the document easier for all.

Training

• At Rapiergroup we have developed a 100+ point project management process that incorporates ISO criteria as well as CDM and other health and safety legal requirements. With over 20 project managers on board and a steep recruitment drive in 2017 our team pointed out to us the need to capture the process in a structured online training piece to support existing induction and coaching sessions. This will be in place by the end of February 2017 and will enable all PM’s to quickly refresh on any areas they’re unsure of and will strengthen continuity across the business.

Business continuity, data security and equality

• These areas have always been managed carefully at Rapiergroup but following customer feedback in 2016 the areas will formally be added to our integrated management system in 2017. Our commitment and approach to data security have already been added to our risk manual and investigations are under way as to the potential value in adding ISO27001 to our suite of certificated standards.

Banking fraud

• Senior management alerted the operations team to the latest phase of phishing and banking fraud techniques during the 2016 Management Review meeting. Briefing information has already been obtained and circulated to all those concerned, protecting both us and our customers.

Travel welfare

• Also, following incoming data from 2016, the business is providing additional information to its team regarding health matters relating to flying, particularly deep vein thrombosis. This is a real and present danger and one the business felt compelled to address proactively.

Refreshed communications and stakeholder engagement

• And lastly, following suggestions from some of our clients, Rapiergroup has enhanced its communications strategy to ensure it delivers the right quality and amount of information in 2017 and makes it easy for them all to have their say on the topics they feel the business should be addressing. An enhanced Rapiergroup website is allowing us for the first time to include ISO / safety, health, environmental and quality [SHEQ] related news and updates and to then draw attention to these via social media links. Our new communications manager Luke Snowden is also producing a quarterly newsletter in which we’ll be including some bite-size ISO related facts and figures. New email signatures at Rapiergroup will include a link enabling employees, clients, suppliers and other stakeholders to click and comment on SHEQ related matters and we’ll also be using social media platform Yammer internally to collect additional suggestions and feedback from employees.

If you have any comments or feedback, email iso@rapiergroup.com