Corporate Events Ltd

"We grew from a small company and our management systems weren't keeping pace with us. We had a large gap in the documentation of our processes: we couldn't prove that we were actually doing what we said we were doing.

"We had a genuine wish to improve our health and safety and wanted to make sure we were looking after everyone on site. We wanted to make it a culture, and having the standard in place has given us the framework to do that. In addition, having the certification is a definite advantage when tendering as it gives added credibility in our market place.

"We opted for a full system build because we needed it quickly and wanted to be sure that we had done everything right. That said, I wanted to take a hands-on role and worked alongside Equas Director, Julian Russell, in implementing all of the standards, and our Operations Manager also worked with us on the environmental and health and safety standards. Julian did a lot of the actual documentation and my colleague and I did the implementation. With Julian's guidance, it was pretty easy and straightforward: everything went very smoothly."

Jed Bowers, Quality and Performance Director

The company

Corporate Events provides a full service offering for event management for an extensive portfolio of blue chip corporate clients. Established in 1996, the company directly employs 38 full time staff and is one of the largest corporate events companies in the UK.

It specialises in designing, creating and delivering live events including conferences, roadshows and awards ceremonies, at venues across the UK and Europe.

The challenge

The company enjoyed rapid growth, attracting new clients through its reputation for creativity, technical skills and project management. The nature of the work puts it firmly in the public arena, and anything going awry would be highly visible and damaging.

Each event is bespoke, so the company has to be very responsive. Clients also hold high standards for health and safety management at venues. The challenge was to design flexible processes focused on maintaining key control points, with no compromise on service quality or event safety.

The approach

ISO 9001 is the standard most commonly asked for in tendering, so in 2013 the company elected to work towards it first. To make the system accessible to all employees, it was built and housed in the Activ web-based management system.

For a business founded on customer service and reputation, Activ offered analytical feedback from customer questionnaires, which proved invaluable in maintaining service levels.

The following year the company implemented ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 in tandem. Jed and the Operations Manager carried out the implementation while Julian provided documentation and guidance. The health and safety standard was driven by the recognition that rapid growth had brought a far larger range of on-site services, increasing liability and potential risk to employees.

The benefits

With certification in place, Corporate Events can prove it has robust procedures and systems, meeting the requirements of high profile clients. It has clear audit trails, and documents are updated automatically so the company stays abreast of changes in regulation and legislation. Manual handling risks in particular have been minimised.

Activ also makes the system easy to maintain, and employees can find the information they need quickly.