How to get ISO 9001 Certified

ISO 9001 is the most popular and well-known quality management standard which highlights a  business’s capability to produce consistently high-quality products or services through its internal systems. Understanding how to become ISO 9001 certified will place you and your business in a position to enhance your internal systems. In this week’s blog, the Bramwell Partners team takes a dive into ‘how to get ISO 9001 certified’.

Bramwell Partners are Brisbane’s workplace compliance professionals and can work with your business to cultivate a workplace that continuously improves. We provided ISO 9001 training, HR consulting, quality management system planning, and other services related to business management.

How to become ISO 9001 certified

Knowing how to get ISO 9001 certified starts with the development of a quality management system (QMS) with a  focus on continuous improvement. Where you start is a personal choice, but it is important to consider the areas you believe to be crucial to your organisation. It is also beneficial to designate a person responsible for managing and coordinating the process. Consider explaining the benefits of certification to your team and help them see how being certified is to their advantage. To become ISO 9001 certified there is a number of steps that should be taken to place yourself in the best possible position for success.

Step 1: Perform a Gap Analysis

We recommend conducting a gap analysis to examine where you may be ISO 9001 compliant and to identify the gaps that are in your business. This can help identify key areas that need addressing and assist in the planning stage.

Step 2: Planning

Completing a Gap Analysis will help to identify the areas that need addressing which can help you through the planning process. In this planning process you can highlight tasks that would be best suited to certain people within the business and set realistic goals and target dates. Bringing in professionals with certification expertise can help guide you through the planning stages or even create a plan for you.

Step 3: Paperwork

Getting the right documents and filing them is important to mastering how to get ISO 9001 certified. Making sure your documentation is customised to your organisation’s requirements and performance needs goes a long way to ensuring the success of getting your ISO 9001 certification. Its important that when developing these documents that they are created as templates for staff to use with simple steps using language suited to your business. It can be a laborious process creating these templates but understanding how to become ISO 9001 certified entails being familiar with the required documents and making them simple for people in your business to use..

Step 4: Applying the Procedures

It is important  during the implementation of procedures that theteam understand the impact of the procedure and process on how to become ISO 9001 certified.  To ensure the successfulness of your implemented procedures, you should make sure that the procedure and process is relevant, appropriate and the team are trained in its use and application. . Overtime you will need to track their progress, review the processes as necessary, and make a record to compare past and present performance.

Step 5: Conduct an Audit

A key part of identifying how to become ISO 9001 certified is through the Internal Audit process. As your system starts to reach various milestones that you have created, it is worth conducting an internal audit to help establish the company’s current position and the effectiveness of the recently introduced procedures.  In doing so you are Analysing your company’s current performance and records to verify that you are complying with ISO 9001 standards. An effective means of conducting an internal audit is by providing auditor’s training to any team members you have dedicated to organising your certification process. Alternatively, you can let your certification consultant conduct this audit..

You will need to perform a complete internal audit to be considered for ISO 9001 registration and it is best to do this as early as possible. After the audit is finished and any non-compliant areas are brought into compliance, then your business can move on to the Pre-certification audit.

Step 6: Certification

The final phase of certification requires the completion of a pre-certification audit with a Third-Party Certification Body. . The auditor will review your business records to assess how  your business has effectively put your new quality management system into action and that it follows all the ISO 9001 specifications. During the Pre-certification audit the auditor may recognize areas for improvement before the final certification audit.  Once these steps have been completed a certification audit can be made by Third Party Certification Body.

Step 7: Keep Current

Once you have your certificate, you will need to ensure you are still up to the standards and be recertified every three years. This achieved by performing regular internal audits on your system. Retaining your certification requires a Surveillance Audit every year, with a Re Certifcation audit performed in the third year.

How do you get ISO certified?

getting ISO 9001 certified can be a fairly straightforward process however the level of documentation you have will give you an idea of how long it may take to get certified. Getting ISO certified requires an external provider to come out and conduct an audit to identify the processes that are present. and it is often the case that the processes being implemented are sufficient to attain certification. Your business or organisation is what gets certified not an individual. Bramwell Partners collaborates with numerous Third-Party Certifying Bodies and can help you find the best Certifier for your business.

Need more details?

We hope this has helped answer, “How do you get ISO certified?” and helped provide some insights into the importance of ISO 9001 certification. To get a further understanding of ISO certification Bramwell Partners are conducting a Workshop on 24^th January which will explore the benefits of ISO 9001 certification; review each of the clauses of the standard; and discus what is required in certification. Click Here to secure your spot now.

For more information get in touch with our team today! Bramwell Partners provides HR consulting Brisbane wide and can help your business manage its HR duties. We welcome any questions about ISO 9001 training or other HR-related queries.