Tendering for a major contract to take your business to the next level can be daunting and there are often hurdles to overcome just in submitting your initial tender. Whether it be tendering for government contracts, NHS contracts, council contracts or for major companies, especially in the construction sector, the first stage will be to complete a PQQ – a Pre-qualification Questionnaire.
Often running into many pages, the opening questions will be about your certification status of your business and most often these will relate to international standards, such as ISO 9001 (Quality) or ISO 14001 (Environmental) or could be standards specific to your industry – CHAS for construction (Safety), AS9100 for aerospace and IATF16949 for automotive industry. By ticking “Yes” to the standards stated in the PQQ, you will be able to jump over much of the PQQ. This is due to the certification you hold being sufficient demonstration for the contractor to place their confidence in you being able to deliver what they need.
In fact, at the recent series of Heathrow Supplier Summits, all of the main contractors that we spoke to were looking for their suppliers to complete the PQQ’s in order to be able to bid. By having certification of these recognised standards, this not only gives you an opportunity to tender but it increases your credibility with your existing customers; it can also be a valuable marketing tool for you.
By not having it, you will be missing out on business – possibly lots of business. Our conservative estimate is that you will be missing out on at least £20,000 worth of business – in reality it is probably much more than this – limiting your growth and the number of people you can employ. Also having your name on high profile projects increases your own profile and will probably lead to even greater opportunities.
For smaller companies where there is no trained quality or environmental officer, this can seem like a high mountain to climb. “Where do I start?” “What do I need to do?” Often the other question which is just as pressing is “Where can I find time to do this on top of everything else that I do?”
At Glade Consulting Services we have been just where you are: having to answer the PQQ’s for the businesses we were employed in and having to overcome the implementation of these standards within our businesses. Yes, it is challenging but it is all possible so have heart and press on through it. But you don’t have to do it alone and there is plenty of help out there to help you through the process of preparing for the certification – getting the right systems and documents in place – and then assisting you through the course of the audit to ensure you get the certification you want and deserve.
The whole process of getting yourselves certified doesn’t need to cost the earth, either. The size and complexity of your business will determine how much the certification process will cost, and there are range of options in terms of certification bodies open to you. For most businesses that we work with, the certification takes 2 days. We will even organise the certification body on your behalf, making the whole process hassle free for you.