The consultancy started working with HOST in 2014 in support of pre-qualification, by drafting the submissions for environmental and safety management. HOST committed to, at a very early stage, becoming certified for management of quality (ISO 9001), environment (ISO 14001) & occupational health & safety (OHSAS 18001) as soon as their tender had been accepted.
The certifications were chosen because they focus on managing risks to the business, which helped to give the client confidence that HOST’s fledgling organisation would succeed. HOST was awarded the contract for accommodation in the spring of 2017 and work started on an integrated health, safety, quality & environmental management system at the end of June the same year.
A focused team was assembled to manage the certification process with Richard Shearwood-Porter at the helm. Richard and the team put the organisation under the microscope to identify gaps in the company’s processes.
Once identified, procedures were put in place and a model was created for each ISO certificate. Systems were integrated so that the company has a unified approach to managing service, environmental and safety risks. In order to meet the standards at such an early stage, and despite the company at that stage employing less than 10 people, the frameworks put in place had to have the scope for much larger operations, enabling HOST to scale-up easily as the company has grown.
SOCOTEC, a UKAS accredited ISO certification service was chosen to be HOST’s auditor and to award the certificates. Choosing a fully accredited auditor put another layer of difficulty on an already challenging mission, but demonstrated further HOST’s commitment to the highest standards of management. From a standing start, HOST achieved certification within 3 months.
Richard Shearwood-Porter was appointed as HOST’s Health & Safety Management Lead and went on to support them by helping to recruit and build the Health & Safety Team; prepare high-level plans for environmental and safety management; prepare environmental and safety emergency plans; to guide the increase in scope of the ISO management system as first Hinkley and later Sedgemoor Campus came on line; and to guide the transition from OHSAS 18001 to the new safety standard ISO 45001.