ISO 9001

Quality management systems

The international standard for a quality management system: understanding customer requirements, controlling processes, measuring outcomes, handling nonconformance and improving; the most widely certified standard in construction.

ISO 9001 asks an organisation to define its processes, control them, check the outputs against requirements, deal with what does not conform and learn from it. In construction terms: understanding the specification and the client's requirements before starting; planning the work with inspection and test plans; controlling materials, subcontractors and equipment; inspecting and testing; raising and closing NCRs; measuring customer satisfaction and defects; auditing the system internally; and reviewing it at management level. Documented information is required where it adds control, not for its own sake.

Certification follows the same two-stage, annual surveillance, three-year cycle as ISO 45001, by a UKAS-accredited body. It is asked for by main contractors, frameworks and public bodies, and it is part of the Common Assessment Standard at the higher tiers. For a specialist contractor it dovetails with product standards: BS EN 1090 factory production control, for instance, is in large part an ISO 9001-shaped system applied to steelwork.

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