Introduction and Opinions Welcome

Hello All,

My ultimate question is: Is ISO 9001:2015 of practical use when building an engineering/inspection company from scratch and if so are there other recommended ISO standards that would also be of use from the start? I have included more depth to this question below.

After a period of unemployment due to a illness I am now back to health. Whilst away from industry I've had some ideas on starting my own business.

The business is likely to be heavily documents based - Providing desktop engineering assessments and onsite inspection services. Both services have to be in compliance to existing and my own written standards

I thought it would be prudent to build the business, from scratch, to comply with ISO 9001 and have started researching the code and its use. I have purchased a copy of 9001:2015.

Do you think this may serve as a hindrance or would constructing my company based around 9001 be beneficial (in a practical point of view) when starting up? If so are there other standards (i.e., 14001) that I could also build into my buinssess system from the start.

my funds are extremely limited so I am not talking about being certified to these standards from the start - merely building my company around them so it is not a major task later on to get certified.

I value and thank you for any opinion/critique

 

I think what you will find is as you build your business, with or without 9001 in mind, you will hit 80-90% of the requirements. Most of the requirements are just good business sense. So I wouldn't worry about the standard so much, and just build your business based on sound principles. If and when you decide to go for certification, you can see if there are any gaps.

 

If You say don't have enough funds, You could start to gather standards for engineering , e.g. asme, api, nema, cad software , engineering procedures, technical charts.
Once you have setup you business you may start with 9001, which is good for starting.
Hope this helps

 

Since you will offer assessment and inspection services, I believe this doesn't need to start big. Your most important asset is your knowledge and expertise. Unlike with medium to big size enterprises, you will not worry much about resources in terms of infrastructure, employees, and documented procedures. You don't have yet to deal with various types of suppliers. If you are the proprietor, most of the decisions and actions will emanate from you. IMHO, you will need to focus first on the viability of your business. As your business grow, you can no longer depend on yourself to decide and act on all matters and issues - a system, then, comes handy.

 

Evening All,

Many thanks for your replies - all of which I've taken onboard.

The one thing I do have is time - I'm going to to take to use the principals of 9001 and base business around it and consider certification at a much later date.