Case Study: City Developments Dept.

Introduction

City Developments is one of eight Edinburgh City Council Departments. The Department is composed of four main functions namely Corporate Property and Emergency Planning; Transportation; Planning; and Economic Development. The parts of these four functions within the City Development Department that have been certificated with ISO 9001:2000 are as follows:-

The Department is the third largest with the City Council with 1200 staff. Corporate Property and Emergency Planning are ISO 9001:2000 registered with BSI; and Transportation and Planning are both registered with SGS Yarsley. The quality management system of City Developments is arranged into four components: the Service Plan which includes quality objectives; the six Management System procedures; Operating Procedures and finally Work Instructions.

Both the Council and City Developments have been subject to a considerable amount of structural change in recent years. This is continuing and is exemplified by the construction of new Council offices in Edinburgh which will be ready in the autumn of 2006. The move into a new building will be accompanied by a change to the working environment and working practices for all staff.

The Department coupled with the whole Council is recognised as an Investor in People.

Why use ISO 9000?

Initially in 1992 the Director of Technical Services wanted a means to consider the customer care implications of their work. In particular he wished to gain the insight from a third party audit –hence the interest in ISO 9000. Subsequently through re-organisation the Technical services function was subsumed into the new City developments Department and renamed Corporate Property. Additionally the Building Services Section runs very much on procedural lines eg the management of Building Warrants.

Lothian Regional Council Highways Department was in a different situation. With the involvement in the Scottish Executive‘s FLAC initiative the DLO side of Highways, ERS, was obliged to adopt the ISO 9000 framework for contractual reasons. Additionally when the client side of Transportation, Network Services, combined with ERS the Management Systems of both gained due to following an ISO 9000 approach. In bringing the client and the delivery arms together the resulting reduction in duplication of processes and paperwork was considerable along with a clear improvement in communication between these two functions within the Department.

ISO 9001:2000

For such a diverse range of services the change to the ISO 9000 standard introduced from 2000 provided a new set of challenges and an opportunity to involve managers more directly into the working of their own Management System. Denise Fraser, the Department’s Quality Assurance Manager, had from the beginning always approached the ISO 9000 standard with a process-driven hat on. So the change in emphasise represented by the revised standard was broadly welcomed. However the approach taken to the transition process had to consider how all other stakeholders within the Department developed this process-driven mindset and were brought onside to work with the new framework. It proved hard, although ultimately rewarding work. Staff groups were told to ‘bucket all existing procedures’.

The Internal Auditors were trained in the new standard thus setting them up to support the staff groups assigned by their managers to draft out new processes. The Quality Assurance Manager gained the benefit of views of staff who were used to delivering the service day in day out. A big rationalisation process arose particularly of existing forms reduced from over 200 to 17 within the Transportation section alone. This subsequently led to a significant drop in the number of corrective actions identified across the Department through third party audits.

The other benefit of the approach adopted was the enhanced involvement of Departmental managers who, it was noticed, had to improve their understanding of standard operating processes in order to support the new Quality Management Systems as defined by the new framework.

The approach of the Quality Assurance Manager working with the groups of staff across such adverse range of functions within the Department was not to lay down a detailed prescription of how to address the needs of the new ISO 9001:2000 framework, but to adopt a devolved form of ownership to what came out of the working groups. For example how different groups outlined their defined processes was left to them. No particular softwear application was purchased and supplied to relevant users. In fact not every member of staff had easy access to a computer, eg Roads Maintenance Workers. As long as they took care to define their own particular approach to be used then this was acceptable. For example as long as there were clearly defined key symbols to be used to demonstrate the mapped processes such symbols could be selected by the particular group producing them.

It took approximately 13 months to complete all Management Systems to meet the ISO 9001:2000 framework. However the two certificate bodies had different approaches to their clients. BSI were considered more prescriptive in the approach they looked to their clients to adopt in the transition process, while SGS’s approach was much more facilitative enabling Planning and Roads and Transportation to have more ownership of the management of the necessary changes to be made. As a consequence the Planning Section were registered with SGS within nine months.

The Internal Auditors

Those playing the Internal Auditor role are drawn from all parts of the department. The role is mentioned at the regular induction courses attended by new staff. The Quality Assurance Manager attends these courses. Those new staff interested in playing the role are asked to contact the Quality Assurance Manager following clearance from their line manager. All Auditors are trained by SQMC. The number of Auditors has varied over the years although the number stands currently at a healthy 15. Each is scheduled to complete five audits per year -three in the first half of the year and two plus any Corrective Actions to close out in the second. Auditors are paid £250 per annum for the work completed.

Impact of the Transition to ISO 9001:2000

Working with well-defined quality management systems has proved beneficial as the Council has continued to review and re-organise the services provided to the local citizens and in the efficiency of the more customer-focused delivery processes. The transition process to ISO 9001:2000 has helped to realise some of the gains through the extensive re-organisation activities, whether they are originating form a corporate or departmental source. In particular the quality management framework is helping to pursue a more customer-focused processes; the healthier emphasis on improvements in delivering processes rather a more slavish effort to comply with the 20 clauses of the old standard; much reduced documentation to maintain; improved management awareness of those processes; and a new ‘People Approach’ strategy within the Council and the Department, for example responding to the results of the staff surveys now regularly conducted within the Council.

For further information on any matters relating to City Developments use of the ISO 9001:2000 framework please contact Denise Fraser, Quality Assurance Manager, on 0131 529 4907 or email denise.fraser@edinburgh.gov.uk