Multisite certification at Heijmans

In November 2024 I had a chat with Sandra Eilers, Project Leader Quality at Heijmans, a big Dutch building company.

Heijmans has multisite certifications for ISO 9001, ISO 14001, VCA, Safety, and the CO2 Performance Ladder. Some sites have also implemented ISO 27001.

For Heijmans it is important to have their management system certified to make assurance and improvement visible and because of tenders. They have multisite certification, instead of single site certification, showing to be one Heijmans and of course because of savings on external audit time and cost.

The management system of Heijmans consists of Living, Working, and Connecting. The generic part of their management system contains amongs others the handling of the important Go/No-Go moments, Risk management, HRM, Procurement, Safety. The system supports the business. Processes related to finance, marketing, and sustainability are part of this management system.

Heijmans uses Comm'ant for their description of processes, including the Go/No-Go moments. The different sites of Heijmans report waste, audits, evaluations, complaints and environmental issues in different systems to central.

Heijmans has a central audit system. The handling of findings and corrective actions of internal and external audits is also in a central system. Heijmans conducts on the findings relating to multisite certification an impact analysis.

Heijmans does the Management Review in such a way that it supports their business. Since 2 years Living, Working, and Connecting reports quarterly their progress on the annual plans. The Quality Department gives input on internal audits etc. Twice a year this department reviews the reports on the mandatory issues from the standards.

Our advise to Heijmans regarding their multisite certification:

Onboarding Process for External Auditors: Implement an onboarding process to ensure auditors are well-informed about Heijmans’ specific systems and changes. This will improve audit quality and the collaboration.

Audit Time Calculation: Challenge the certifier to revise the audit time calculation based on sampled sites, see Guidance on the Determination of Audit Time for Integrated Audit of Multi-Site Management Systems (IAF ID14:2023). This could reduce external audit costs by approximately 25%, see Interview with Ronald Velsink of Unica and Save cost at Teijin Aramid.

Define define the central function: Based on the IAF.MD1, this is only a limited group of people. like central management and quality. The needed time for the annual audit of this central function should be based on this small group. These group of people are only a part of the Head Quarter. This HQ should be treated as a site to be sampled and not audited every year completely.

By implementing these recommendations, Heijmans could enhance audit efficiency, achieve significant cost savings and further strengthen its integrated management system.