Becoming Leaders in Quality Management: PBA’s Journey to ISO 9001 Accreditation

How did you find the certification process with Centre for Assessment?

We began our ISO 9001 journey over 10 years ago and switched to CfA in 2021 following a quality and cost market assessment. Despite concerns about changing from our long-term assessor, CfA's administration and audit process proved exemplary, and we quickly realised that we had nothing to worry about.

The first audit with CfA marked a significant improvement - allowing in-depth discussions about our QMS's operational impact rather than the previous provider's mechanical document reviews.

We now view our auditor as a valuable business partner, and through constructive audits, our QMS has fully matured to support ongoing business development.

What are the benefits of ISO 9001 and what impact do you feel these had on your company?

Applied ecology is a young industry with complex regulations where few providers demonstrate quality assurance. While small practitioners lack accreditation, even ecology units within larger firms often lack sector-specific quality systems.

As larger clients increasingly demanded evidence of validated quality approaches in frameworks and tenders, case-by-case documentation proved inefficient. PBA recognised that demonstrating early ecological consultation's value required showing specific cost and delivery benefits.

To differentiate from competitors and access construction, civil, and utility sectors, PBA pursued ISO 9001 certification. Their cost-benefit analysis confirmed the investment's value exceeded the implementation challenges.

As specialists selling services often viewed as overhead by purchasing managers, PBA needed to demonstrate guaranteed quality through recognized standards. The results were transformative: five major long-term client partnerships, consistent growth in turnover and profit margins, and staff expansion from 5 to 20 employees.

What lessons did you learn, and do you have any advice for organisations considering becoming ISO 9001 accredited?

We have found that every recent CfA led and internal audit is an opportunity to discover ways in which we can further develop the efficiency and effectiveness of our business processes, to deliver outstanding client services. Our internal audit process has matured because of an external audit challenge; to enable us to examine in depth how well our internal business systems deliver desired outputs and outcomes. It has also empowered us to improve or change these to meet evolving client expectations and the continued growth of the business in terms of both size and the range of services offered.

Implementing an ISO management standard provides an opportunity to question deeply how things are done in a structured and systematic way and to see what can be made simpler, more efficient and more effective, for the benefit of staff and clients. We continue to be impressed by the business benefits that this accreditation brings.

A quote from Ian Fleming, HSEQ Manager at PBA:

“As a direct consequence of working with CfA to refine our quality management systems in line with ISO9001/2015, we have secured long-term framework partnerships with five major clients.  We have seen our client base grow exponentially and we now enjoy considerable repeat business from demanding existing clients reducing to almost nil the need for resource intensive competitive tendering. The process of competing for framework tenders has been simplified, made more effective, evidence based and successful.  Above all we can now demonstrate that effective and efficient ecology services underpinned by a systematic approach to quality are a benefit rather than a cost”.

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