I wrote previously about how we were “in pursuit” of the International Organisation for Standards (ISO) standards – both ISO 9001 which is all about quality, and ISO 27001 which is all about information security.

I can now – very proudly – announce that we caught them!

The process of getting to this point has been a pretty intense one, especially for those of us that are on our Quality Team – Shay and Drew as our Security Officers, Gill and Barb as our Quality Managers, and Andrew and myself as the ‘Risk Owners’. Other staff also played a role in getting us here and in the last few months we’ve been steadily rolling out a whole range of improvements to our procedures and working practices.

We realised this morning that, with new appointments coming on board recently (and introductions are coming shortly), that we almost number 30 staff – the biggest that Gaia Resources has ever been. And this is one of the reasons that the Quality and Information Security Management Systems are so important. As I mentioned in that previous blog, it’s important that we enshrine our standards in procedures and processes that enable us to continue to deliver high quality solutions to our clients.

One of my favourite parts of the ISO Quality System is the ‘Opportunity for Improvement’ (OFI) component, that empowers anyone within our organisation – or even our clients – to suggest ways in which we can improve our procedures and systems. This was an initiative we’d already taken at our strategy workshop earlier in the year, but formalising the procedure really does add some more weight to it. We have a lot of OFIs already being implemented as a result of our audits and certification process, with more to come.

And so, to reiterate what I said in the previous blog, if there’s some way that you think we can improve what we’re doing (i.e. an OFI!), we’d love to hear from you. Please drop me a line directly at piers@gaiaresources.com.au, or start a conversation with us on social media via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Piers