ISO refers to International Organisation for Standardisation. ISO standards cover virtually every business sector and industry type.
When a company is ISO certified you can expect the following standards:
- The organisation is well managed
- The organisation is independently audited
- There is continuous improvement within the organisation
- The organisation is internationally recognised and respected
What are the new standards?
The ISO standards that we’re currently working on at Mayer Brown are related to transport planning, infrastructure design and environmental studies. The standards are:
- ISO 9001. These standards are for Quality Management System.
- ISO 14001. These standards are for Environmental Management System.
Both sets of standards are moving from the 2008 to the 2015 versions.
What does this mean for Mayer Brown’s work with transport planning?
The new standards are all about quality and environmental management. They’re intended to make it easier to incorporate quality and environmental management into core business process, including transport planning and infrastructure design.
Based on the PDCA cycle, the new standards introduce a common framework for all ISO management systems. The PDCA cycle comprises:
- Plan
- Do
- Check
- Act
By approaching all work and projects through this cycle, quality and environmental management become a seamless part of business process.
What does this mean for Mayer Brown clients?
The standards that we work within are designed to tackle the realities of delivering a world class service for transport planning, infrastructure design and environmental studies that adheres to prescribed criteria in the UK, Europe and worldwide.
The new standards place greater emphasis on:
- Measuring and properly assessing input and output of work processes
- Increased top management engagement
- Risk based thinking – to understand effects of uncertainty
- Increased ability to satisfy customers, and awareness of expectations of all interested parties.
What are the timescales?
We’re currently reviewing our ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 management systems. As we’re already working to the very high standards for transport planning, infrastructure design and environmental studies required of the earlier 2008 standards, this exercise is predominantly a streamlining of the current systems. In practice, it will provide greater flexibility to allow for the varied company work streams.
Our new documentation, which will give full details and guidance for Mayer Brown’s application of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 to transport planning, infrastructure design and environmental studies will be completed by the end of 2017. We will be rolling out these standards to new projects that we embark on during this time.
The new ISO standards will be fully endorsed and implemented by spring 2018.
ISO standards are important. They’re important to our teams at Mayer Brown in that they create a practical framework that enables us to deliver exceptional consultancy for transport planning, infrastructure design and environmental studies. They’re important to our clients because they give an assurance of quality throughout any planning process. If you want to know more about the way we work to ISO standards, give us a call. We’re always happy to share our knowledge and experience.
