Obstructive costs for becoming certified for Quality Management, Health & Safety and Environment?

[stormy3000]

We're a 4 year old professional animation business, looking to grow through winning larger contracts by making ourselves known (or at least discoverable) to more 'huge' organisations. We've worked with a good number of large brands and utility companies over the years, where through good SEO, networking we've been fortunate to be approached directly, networking, word of mouth or a 3rd party agency.

However, I'm aware there are approved procurement routes used by many large corporation/utility companies which restricts where they can find suppliers.

It seems clear that having a documented and certified system for 'Quality Management', 'Health and Safety Management' and 'Environment Management', plus a record of your 'Carbon footprint' are key to then being an option for many large corporations to work with.

This seems to require considerable invesment of many many thousands to secure just one cerfication for a particualr ISO (or similar) on one of the above. With it easily costing £15 to £20k to cover all 4.

I understand why this may be the case, as it means they can hire a company that they know conforms to a needed criteria, minimises risk, provides a good supply chain, is green, supports good working practices and won't be going under any time soon.

Though it's a tricky barrier to entry for SMBs, which I appreciate is partly the point. I'm not suggesting it is a broken system, where as, I'm more intrigued as to how SMB's might negotiate this.

Question:
Has anyone else on this forum gone through the process of getting certified for all the above? ... Did you discover any lower cost ways to achieve this, ie.. through grants etc.

Or is it simply a matter of waiting and growing the business more slowly. i.e. we may be approved on one of the procurement site but only visible to certain companies without the same needed criteria. Then in time, when/if funds are available and if we decide it is a worthwhile investment we could work toward being certified as needed.

 

[Mr D]

Not sure costs are obstructive. Presumably costs reflect difficulty / time / cost to certify your business etc?

Have steered a couple of organisations in getting minor certification and been part of process getting some other higher certifications. Lot more time and effort involved in the higher ones, big thick folders of proof and process write-ups.

It can be worth looking around for providers, sometimes more than one company is offering the process.
Just don't expect it too cheap if its more than a simple certificate issuing process.

 

[WaveJumper]

Check this link out it may be of some help and point you in the right direction for some funding solutions best of luck:

https://www.clearquality.co.uk/news/clear-quality-help-with-iso-grant-funding

 

[The Byre]

I think you are over-thinking this!

I've never heard of an animation studio being ISO9000+ certified! The tech-specs for animation are whatever they are! If a commissioning company asks for a 4K-RAW file, that's what they get - and if they want it as an authored HD Blu-Ray disk, they get that. I fail to see how the creative process and the quality of the creative process can be QC'ed.

Movie studios have to have H&S processes in place because they can be very dangerous environments. People hanging off wires or swimming in tanks, climbing buildings and firing guns when immersed in smoke with practical gas flames and thunder-flashes going off can get hurt.

But QC'ing the filming??? "Sorry, the QC dept. tells me you'll have to use an Alexa-6 and not a Red! And have those Display-Port cables been ISO9001 certified yet?"

Very large companies nearly have their own video departments and often these have CGI bods somewhere - or they come to someone like you and hire-in that capacity.

H&S? CGI is just office work. A fire extinguisher, an exit sign, smoke alarms and someone with a first aid certificate - job done!

 

[stormy3000]

I think you are over-thinking this!
....
H&S? CGI is just office work. A fire extinguisher, an exit sign, smoke alarms and someone with a first aid certificate - job done!

I don't disagree at all. Bar someone spinning too quickly on their office desk chair, spiking their hand with a well sharpened pencil, there's very little call for larger health and safety practises. We of course need to conform to data storage/ protection rules and take the correct view point on human welfare and the environment..

It's not that we have to have these certficates, but we do need them, if we hope to be approved as a potential supplier on some large organisations chosen procurement platform (i.e. Achilles).

 

[stormy3000]

Check this link out it may be of some help and point you in the right direction for some funding solutions best of luck:

https://www.clearquality.co.uk/news/clear-quality-help-with-iso-grant-funding

Great, many thanks for sharing the link.

 

[WaveJumper]

Although I was in a completely different sector to yourselves (commercial property management) I know where you are coming from and can feel your frustration, one of the main driving forces behind this in our industry was not just the clients / owners expectations but the investors who sat behind these.

It was very frustrating for a lot of our contractors (and us) as they had to have various levels of ‘conformity’ depending on which owners / investors we and they were dealing with at any one time, a lot of this also was dependent on which country they were based in too. Hence your small local builder or service provider never stood a chance.

My advice for what it is worth and I am sure you have done / doing this already, is focus on what your industry’s standard requirements are, is there one ISO / award which they all except as a minimum, as you have said its not cheap to obtain and would help if you can just focus and work towards one at this time.

 

[stormy3000]

Thanks @WaveJumper . It's certainly helpful to hear.

I've just ofund this document from BSI which makes for some positive reading. Plus makes me think a more structured Quality Managment System ISO 9001 may be good for the business regardless of an our aim of securing larger contracts.

"The generally held consensus is that small businesses consider the implementation of the standard to be a daunting and expensive prospect, with high on-going costs. There is an assumption that it will require a whole new set of systems and procedures, and that the system requires complex, documented, detailed procedures, forms and records. It is often seen by small businesses as regulatory-driven through the document structure and terminology. This reaction is borne out of the burden of regulation on small and micro businesses. In reality, these assumptions are unfounded."

https://www.bsigroup.com/LocalFiles/en-GB/small-business/UK-SB-BSI-ISO-9001-Whitepaper-UK-EN.pdf