NEWS
A CREDIT TO EVERYONE
Teamwork inspires Aircon Group ’ s successful accreditation journey
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Friday evening phone call last winter led to major changes at Aircon Group – and got a successful accreditation journey underway .
The call , received by sales and marketing manager Erica Johnson , said the firm ’ s procurement team had been speaking to the different sites Aircon Group serviced and maintained , and there was a request for Aircon to work on more contracts in other sectors .
The following week , Erica and branch manager Keith Quinn started completing the paperwork required to apply for a new framework agreement with the client .
At the same time , health and safety advisor Ron Agar set about upgrading Aircon Group ’ s Constructionline accreditation to gold – enlisting valuable help from Carney Consultancy .
Aircon Group thought everything had been submitted – until Erica received an email from the procurement team , asking for confirmation the group ’ s ISO accreditations were with UKAS .
Unfortunately , the company was accredited by QMS and therefore didn ’ t qualify – and they had just four months to achieve UKAS accreditation .
Aircon MD Steve Farrell said : “ This would be a significant investment for the business but it had to be done . I always say that we provide quality and achieving UKAS accreditation would take us to a new level , which I was confident we were ready for .”
Carney Consultancy completed a gap analysis which gave Aircon confidence it wasn ’ t too far from achieving the standard . Erica and Karen Lansdell , PA to the MD , then set about identifying what was needed .
Design and contracts manager James Farrell took charge from an engineering and technical standpoint , while Ron
Fleet – Aircon Group received its ISO9001 and ISO14001 UKAS accreditation after a speedy team effort .
wrote the ISO manuals and Karla Mennell , administration apprentice , collated the online system ready to send to the auditor .
The auditor visited in November for a successful stage one audit . But with the stage two audit only 10 days away , they enlisted Matthew Cave , management system consultant , for advice on what needed to be added to the system .
Aircon Group received its ISO9001 and ISO14001 UKAS accredited certificates on Wednesday December 21 , just 10 days before the deadline .
Erica said : “ What an achievement ! To all work together to achieve UKAS accreditation in such a short amount of time is an absolute testament to the hardworking team .”
108 | Tees Business