Where we work

What is the same in every market, and what is not

The standard does not change at a border. ISO 9001 asks the same things of a factory in Chennai and a factory in Chicago, and an auditor works from the same clauses in both. What changes is everything around it: who asks for the certificate, which regulator is also involved, and which sector scheme sits on top.

That is why these pages are organised by market rather than by standard alone. A supplier in Nigeria is usually answering an oil and gas operator's prequalification; one in Germany is answering an automotive customer and the European regulation behind it; one in India is often answering a tender on GeM. The work is similar. The reason for it, and the evidence that satisfies it, is not.

Whether a certificate is recognised in another country

This is the question that decides whether certification was worth doing, and the answer does not depend on the certification body's name. It depends on who accredited them. A certificate is issued by a certification body; that body is accredited by an accreditation body, and it is the second name a buyer's procurement team checks.

Where an accreditation body is a signatory to the IAF Multilateral Recognition Arrangement, certificates issued under its accreditation are intended to be recognised in the other signatory countries. That is the mechanism that lets a certificate earned at home satisfy a customer abroad. Where it is absent, a certificate can be perfectly genuine and still be refused by the buyer who asked for one.

How we work with certification bodies

One certificate across several sites or several countries

An organisation operating in more than one country does not usually need a separate certificate for each. A multi-site certificate covers a central function and a defined group of sites, with the audit programme sampling across them rather than visiting every one every year. It costs less than separate certifications and it is easier to keep coherent, because one management system is being run rather than five.

It is not automatic. The sites have to share the processes being certified and a central function that can hold them to it. Where operations in two countries genuinely run differently, separate scopes are the honest answer and usually the cheaper one in the end.

How we work across borders

Onsite, remote, or a mix, decided by where your sites are rather than by preference. Documentation review, management system design, internal audit training and most gap closure work perfectly well remotely. Walking a production line, testing an emergency procedure and sampling records at a location generally do not.

We are a consulting organisation. We prepare organisations for certification and we never certify: the accreditation rules prohibit the body that builds a management system from auditing it, and that independence is the whole value of the certificate.

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