Skills and Entrepreneurship 45
Beyond the certificate
Katerina Liana on how the revised ISO standards can help London businesses grow
Katerina Liana – Technical Product Manager | LRQA
Plenty of businesses reach a headcount of 50 people still running on habits that worked with a team of ten. The founder signs off every quote, and the only person who understands the ordering system has never written it down. Habits like these are fine until they are not. The day that person leaves, a process held in one head becomes a risk to the business.
“ For London’ s growing organisations, the challenge is not simply how to grow, but how to grow well
For London ' s growing organisations, the challenge is not simply how to grow, but how to grow well. Management systems standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 are usually filed under compliance, yet they were designed for exactly this problem- and both were revised this year.
Quality as a business discipline
ISO 9001 is often seen as a compliance exercise. At its heart, though, is a simple discipline: understand how your organisation works and what your customers need, then spot where things could go wrong, and keep looking for ways to improve. A wellbuilt quality management system turns individual knowledge into processes the business owns.
From environmental ambition to action
Sustainability is now a commercial consideration. Customers, investors and the larger companies growing business supplies want proof that managing environmental impact is built into how it runs, not just a line on a website.
ISO 14001 gives a business the framework to identify its impacts and risks, set objectives, monitor performance and keep improving. That matters for a growing organisation, because a commitment that was easy to keep on one site gets harder with every new location and supplier unless it is embedded in everyday work.
What has changed in 2026
ISO 14001:2026 was published earlier this year and ISO 9001:2026 followed on 16 September.
Both revisions are evolutionary rather than full redesigns. ISO 9001:2026 puts more weight on leadership and quality culture- whether leadership uses the system to run the business, rather than simply signing it off, and whether quality is understood outside the quality team. It is also clearer on how risks and opportunities should shape planning and decisions. ISO 14001:2026 sharpens the environmental specifics, with more explicit expectations on climate, biodiversity and resource availability, and a clearer view across the product lifecycle.
For a business coming to ISO 9001 for the first time, this is a good moment to start. There is nothing to unlearn, and a system built now is designed around the company you are becoming. Nor need it be the paperwork mountain smaller firms fear. A good system is scaled to the organisation. It documents what must be consistent and leaves the rest.
For businesses already certified, the deadlines to move to the new versions are April 2029 for ISO 14001 and 30 September 2029 for ISO 9001. That is also a useful prompt to ask whether a system designed when the company was half the size still describes it, or has become something done for the auditor.
“ The certificate opens doors, from tenders to customer approvals
Beyond the certificate
The certificate opens doors, from tenders to customer approvals. In our experience, though, it is rarely where the biggest value lies. The businesses that get the most from ISO standards treat the framework as a way of running the company and audit findings as free insight. The ones that get the least treat it as an annual event, with a flurry before the audit and then business as usual.
So rather than asking " what do we need to do to get the certificate?", ask " what does our business need to do to get better?"
Whether you are starting out or already certified, LRQA ' s free selfassessment tools show where your business stands against the new requirements and what to tackle first.
Katerina Liana is technical product manager at LRQA
www. lrqa. com