Making quality a business conversation

World Quality Week is an opportunity to step back from procedures, audits and certifications and ask a more important question: what does quality mean for a business?

For me, the answer goes far beyond compliance. Quality means understanding what clients need, managing risk, making informed decisions, delivering consistently, and learning from experience. When done well, quality management builds confidence and provides a foundation for continual improvement. 

That is particularly relevant at Cundall. We are a global, independent, multidisciplinary engineering and design consultancy, with more than 1,300 colleagues across 27 locations, and have held ISO 9001 certification since 1990. As the business has grown, the challenge has shifted to using its principles to support consistent, high-quality delivery across the organisation. 

A common language for quality

This year has provided an opportunity to bring that conversation to an international audience through the launch of ISO 9001:2026. I represented Cundall as a panellist during the global launch and subsequently as a speaker at BSI's celebration event in London, sharing practical examples of how ISO 9001 can strengthen governance and create business value beyond conformity.

It was also personally significant for me. My career in quality began in manufacturing in Brazil before developing through quality assurance and management systems and, today, into leading quality governance within Cundall's Integrated Management System. Across those different countries, sectors and roles, one principle has remained remarkably consistent: quality works best when it becomes part of how an organisation operates, rather than something it does simply to pass an audit.  

That is one of ISO 9001's strengths. It creates a common framework for thinking about client requirements, processes, responsibilities, risk, performance and continual improvement. At Cundall, this does not mean expecting every office to work in the same way. It means having shared principles and expectations that help us deliver a consistent experience for our clients as the organisation grows.  

Moving the conversation beyond compliance 

At the BSI event, I spoke about a question I often ask colleagues: why do our clients ask for ISO 9001 certification? Ultimately, they want confidence. Confidence that we understand their requirements, manage risks effectively and can consistently deliver quality outcomes. That distinction matters. The certificate has value, but it should be the outcome of an effective management system rather than the reason that system exists.

Turning risk into better decision-making

That theme continued in my BSI podcast discussion, particularly around risk-based thinking.

A practical example at Cundall emerged through one of our external ISO audits. One of our external ISO audits identified an opportunity to strengthen risk management across Cundall. Different risks were being managed through different processes, limiting organisation-wide visibility. Bringing leadership into the discussion helped turn an ISO 9001 finding into a wider conversation about business governance. What started as an ISO 9001 discussion quickly became a wider conversation about business governance. We are now developing a more integrated Enterprise Risk Management approach, with consistent scoring, clearer ownership and leadership review, connecting strategic and operational risks with business continuity and recovery planning.

For me, this demonstrates the real value of risk-based thinking. Rather than risk sitting separately within quality or compliance, an effective management framework connects organisational objectives with risks, controls, ownership and actions. The benefit is better governance, clearer accountability and more informed decision-making.  An audit that could have become an exercise in demonstrating conformity instead became an incentive for strategic business improvement.

What quality means at Cundall

At Cundall, we see ISO 9001 as the backbone of our integrated management system. It provides the underlying framework for understanding our organisation and stakeholders, identifying risks and opportunities, defining responsibilities, controlling information, monitoring performance and continually improving.

That foundation also helps us bring together ISO 14001 for environmental management, ISO 45001 for occupational health and safety and ISO 27001 for information security within one management approach, rather than expecting colleagues to navigate four disconnected systems.

We standardise where consistency adds value. We simplify processes so they can become part of normal working practices. And we share learning and good practice so improvement is not confined to one team, project or location.  

For an engineering consultancy,  these principles translate into very practical activities - understanding client requirements, managing competence and risk, undertaking design reviews, maintaining reliable information and evidence, learning from issues, and preventing problems rather than discovering them at the end of a project.  

Quality is everyone's responsibility

Ultimately, a management system can provide structure, but it cannot create a quality culture on its own.

Quality must be owned by the people making decisions, managing projects and delivering services to clients every day. Leadership needs reliable information from projects to make good decisions, while project teams need to understand not only what controls they are expected to follow, but why those controls matter.

That means quality professionals have a responsibility too. We should not create procedures simply to satisfy an audit. We need to translate standards into practical ways of working, challenge processes that are unnecessarily complicated and keep asking a very simple question: is this helping the business perform better?  

For me, that is what World Quality Week should encourage us to discuss.

Certification provides an important foundation and external recognition. But the real value of quality management comes from the discipline it creates within an organisation: building trust, strengthening accountability, managing risk, retaining knowledge and continually improving the way we work.

That is how we move beyond conformity towards excellence.