Martin Noome is Quality Manager of Arcadis in the Netherlands. He is responsible for the integrated management system (Quality, Health & Safety and environment & sustainability) according to 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001.
Arcadis has 10 offices in the Netherlands, without having one separate headquarter. This organization is a typical multisite organization with a single management system as defined in the IAF.MD1. There is one management, the offices don’t have their own management. The offices have all a comparable setup, only the number of people differ. Centralized processes/activities are Risk Control, Finance, Procurement, Workplace and collaboration, IT (global), QHSE and Human Capital Management.
Arcadis Netherlands has been certified since 1992. Then it gave a competitive advantage. Now, certification is a license to operate for Arcadis. They have their multisite certification with DNV-GL. Internal and external audits are planned risk-based and on their sizes. Bigger offices are audited more often. Every office is audited at least once in the 3 years. Multisite certification fits the organizational setup of Arcadis. And Arcadis wants to profile itself as one organization.
Arcadis has good experiences with DNV-GL; they work/think risk-driven and moreover audit more to the spirit than to the letter of the standards. And the latter suits Arcadis well because they prefer to work from awareness of actions and choices than from simply following check-lists.
The documented management system is now on SharePoint. The system is based on the so-called “The Arcadis Way”. The Arcadis Way is based on the best practices at Arcadis Netherlands and at the other international sites. The setup of the management system at Arcadis was from the start based on the business of Arcadis. Then it was rather common that companies based their management systems of ISO. Martin was from the beginning convinced that this is not the right way.
To promote the responsibility and involvement of line management the management review is conducted in steps. Each line manager receives a questionnaire in Forms, based on the mandatory input requirements from the standards. The input of these managers are discussed on the market group level. This results in new objectives for the coming period. The local QHSE coordinator facilitates this process. Martin processes the results from the market groups and discusses them per process with the relevant process owners.
Martin has regular meetings with his colleagues abroad. Now international certification is too ambitious because of the differences between the countries. The first step is to synchronize the countries' management systems to resolve the difference between the tools used and in the maturity of the systems. Arcadis Arcadis Netherlands will now save about 65% of their cost of certification. With, for example, 50 sites these savings could be about 85%. My advice to Martin would be to start this by first investigating the possibilities of international multisite certification. Companies tend to globalize more and more. National and international, processes and tools will be standardized gradually. And this fits completely in the concept of multisite certification.
Challenge for Martin is to have the QHSE objectives in real business objectives. These business targets could be tagged with Q and HSE in the background. Another challenge for Martin is the further integration of the management system in the business. In the end management systems should be common business.
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