Posted By Descarte I know it sounds obvious but the ISO documents themselves provide a huge amount of information and really spell out the requirements of which you will be undertaking, if undertaking yourself and you havnt already looked at these it should be your first port of call. Des

Posted By Robert K Lewis Cliff One word of caution - make sure any consultant unifies the systems as much as possible or you will get problems. Make sure it meets your needs and ways of doing things and not simply the layout of the standards. It is the auditors job to check your system and s/he cannot insist on any particular system model. Bob

Posted By Alex W Falconer First thing to do, is ask yourself, why do you want to do all 3 systems at the same time? If it client driven? is it just to get the badges on the wall? or is it to ensure you stay one step ahead of your competitors? Is the ethos one of continuous improvement? etc, etc. Whatever your reasons, make sure it is the right one, otherwise you are wasting your time. Whilst a lot of suggestions are made relating to the relevant standards, one which is often overlooked, is PAS 99 which shows a framework for integrated management systems, and will very often strengthen the chances of achieving certification to all 3 standards. Consultants, take them or leave them......! Its up to yourself, however a word to the wise, you already actually have the best consultants on site, the employees themselves, get them, involved, they know the processes inside out far better than any external consultant. This should give you an ideal starting point, before you start spending the company's money in these already tough times. Who knows, you may find yourself gaining some brownie points from the board!

Posted By Steve Clark Cliff, planning is key to this. If you are a company that is well managed you may well find that an awful lot of what is needed is already in place but not necesarily yet 'joined up' within a management system. I suggest that as other contributors have said, the standards have the information that you need. The use of consultants usually arises through fear of the unknown and lack of confidence. Get the standards and read each section carefully asking yourself if and how you might already be meeting the spec'. If you have nothing, then consider carefully how actioning the section would help or improve your business before blindly developing documents that do no more than provide a piece of paper to tick off an action. Above all else, the purpose of the standard is to ensure that your business has has a cohesive 'management' system that starts with a policy and runs through to review and continual improvement that you can evidence(but lets not get carried away with CI - if it's as good as it can get then why waste effort and resources trying to improve the unimprovable). The key word being 'management' - there's little point if the project is given to a H&S or quality person to develop on their todd; management must own the system, must understand it and must take responsibility for its development - otherwise it just ends up as a white elephant that everyone considers to be a pain in the backside. If you are going to the effort of setting up all these systems - i strongly suggest you also look at BS25999 at the same time as it's a doddle to do with 9001 and is a good selling point for your customers. Good luck.