“Roger and Sandy at Episode Ltd were a great in helping us achieve not only one but three ISO standards 9001:2015, 14001:2015 and ISO 45001. Episode were extremely helpful from the onset, they were able to break down the ISO standard so they were easily comprehensible and well applied to our business in a sustainable manner. They are a company that offers a guaranteed certification at the end of the process and they delivered it. I believe that the work completed during this process was key to us having won the Leeds Bid contract.”
Harvey Mills, Managing Director
Summary
Forge Waste & Recycling started trading in November 2010. The company was started by Harvey and Fraser Mills with the aim to offer a competitive and flexible waste management service with an emphasis on making recycling easy.
As a result of the growth of its business, Forge Waste & Recycling engaged Episode to work with them achieving the ISO 9001 quality management, ISO 14001 environmental management and ISO 45001 health and safety management certification.
They quickly came to realise that Episode’s approach, focusing on the business benefits of a robust, operational, management system, meant they had a great basis from which to grow the business in a planned, strategic way.
About the Organisation
Forge Waste & Recycling is a local company with a depot and head office team of in Leeds, West Yorkshire. They offer a range of services from waste management, waste collection and recycling services.
The company has 15 state of the art vehicles in house and they currently service all of West Yorkshire, and are expanding into to other countries.
They have leading edge technology within the vehicles that delivers a unique service for businesses. This, along with their certification to ISO 901, quality-, and ISO 14001, environmental management systems, meant they recently won the prestigious Leeds Business Improvement District’s trade waste service (https://www.leedsbid.co.uk/improving-Leeds-waste-collection).
What the issues were
Forge Waste & Recycling is involved in an industry that is heavily regulated encompassing both legal and regulatory frameworks within the environmental aspects. One of the issues highlighted at the beginning of the project was that there was a huge dependency on Harvey Mills as the MD of the company. Harvey recognised that he needed to spend more time working on the business, and not doing the day to day problem solving of any issues raised. There was a requirement to make significant changes to this and expand responsibility to the others in the business.
One of the environmental issues raised whilst undertaking the environmental aspects and impacts register the dangers of plastic bins being insecurely stored in their premises was highlighted.
When bidding for more contracts with the likes of Universities, the MD realised he needed to invest in an ISO based management systems for quality and environmental. Being ISO certified for both has become more or less a pre-requisite to win these contracts.
What we did about it
One of the best things about ISO standards, especially ISO 9001, is that they force you to fundamentally review every aspect of the organisation. The starting point is always the “context of the organisation” – what you and I call your strategy and business plan.
By taking a structured approach to business and environmental planning with us, Harvey was able to focus the thinking on where the business was at present and where he wanted to take it. We then came up with a range of short, medium & long term objectives and action plans that focused and the team
When the business appointed an Operations Director, Sam Goodall, he brought with him large organisation experience (coming from Leeds Beckett University). Sam understood how important an effective business management system is. As a result Sam and Harvey appointed Episode to provide strategic and operational support of their system.
The outcome
In January 2018 Forge Waste & Recycling were successfully certified to ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015. At the end of the process Harvey realised the importance of the standards to structure the business and its operations in order to help achieve the company goals. Harvey has embraced what ISO stands for into all the areas of this business from when they are recruiting to when change management is required.
In 2021 the company was certified to ISO 45001.
Harvey is adamant that being certified contributed hugely to winning the Leeds BID contract, and he and Sam are continuing to develop the business, suing the system Episode put in place to deliver the strategy they have arrived at.