UKAS ISO 22301 accreditation for SGS

SGS United Kingdom Ltd is one of the first certification bodies in the UK to achieve UKAS accreditation to certify companies to ISO 22301, the standard designed to help organisations respond to an incident that may disrupt or threaten the day-to-day operations of their business. ISO 22301 will help improve the way a business manages this critical issue and SGS has been working with the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) to transition to this new standard and become accredited. An ISO 22301 certification audit from SGS will increase an organisation’s resilience and recovery and improve the risk profile with clients, insurers and stakeholders. Richard Skipsey, Global Product Manager for ISO 27001, ISO 22301, ISO 20000 for SGS, and a CBCI member of the Business Continuity Institute, sees this latest accreditation as vital for SGS clients. “There is a great interest in ISO 22301 from organisations in the UK and there is also a great deal of interest from global companies and from many SGS clients who work with government departments. Suppliers are now being asked for their compliance with ISO 22301 and so we instigated the accreditation process through UKAS.” Business Continuity Management (BCM) is defined as a holistic management process that identifies potential threats to an organisation and the impacts to business operations those threats might cause. It provides a framework for building organisational resilience with the capability of an effective response to safeguard the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities. The ISO 22301 certification ensures a planned effective business continuity management (BCM) system is in place, enabling organisations to respond effectively to any disruption. SGS’s certification expertise makes them an ideal partner for all BCM certification requirements. Richard Skipsey believes it shows a firm commitment to keeping a business running during the management of critical issues. “With an established BCM system, built on ISO 22301, you can define key business processes and the impact that could result from any threats. We have spent the best part of eight months working with UKAS to review our processes. They performed a witnessed audit, a remote audit and a detailed assessment of our work in this field. We have auditors in key locations around the world who can audit ISO 22301 in any location globally. This is a real distinguishing factor for SGS and shows how seriously we take the issues of business continuity in the real world.”

For more information on UKAS ISO 22301 accreditation for SGS talk to SGS United Kingdom Ltd