The UKAS ISO Survey

ISO released their 2019 survey last week showing the number of valid certificates around the world. This covered 1,973,310 certified sites over 196 countries, 12 standards and 39 EA sectors. It allowed for some interesting analysis. I am going to compare the 2018 figures with the 2019 figures for the 5 main certifications we here at Global QA deal with; ISO 9001, 14001, 45001, 27001 & 50001 within the UK.

The ISO Survey

2019 was a good year for certification and saw the number of certificates held increase by 3.6% and the number of sites increase by 5.7%. This is a positive outcome, however the main surprise is that the number of ISO 9001 certificates held and number of sites dropped by 4.3% and 2.0% respectively. This is unusual as this standard is usually the main stay of certification. The biggest increase unsurprisingly came in the uptake  of ISO 45001. As businesses migrate across from OHSAS 18001, I would presume, this will be the case again next year as the final certificates transfer over. Unfortunately, there was no data available to compare this against 2018/2019s 18001 figures to see whether companies had dropped certification instead of migrating. Another unsurprising statistic for us was that there was a large increase in ISO 27001 certificates (+15.3%) and sites (+11.2%) as data protection, GDPR and cyber-attacks become a bigger risk in the modern world.

What this means for Global QA and our clients

The 4 main EA codes Global QA deal with are for Food Products, Beverages & Tobacco (3), Construction (28), Transport, Storage & Communication (31) and Other Services (35). I did an analysis on these against the 5 above standards. Pleasingly the numbers of both sites and certificates have gone up. It was surprising to see the reduction in ISO 50001 sites. Whether certificate holders originally did this for ESOS compliance and have let it drop off is unknown. The large reduction in 9001 certificates in the ‘Other Services’ code comes as a surprise. Whether this has come from some reclassification of companies by CBs or another reason I am unsure. The strangest statistic of the analysis was that zero Food Products, Beverages or Tobacco business had ISO 27001! I find this interesting. Overall ISO 45001 & ISO 27001 saw the biggest increases.

Most ISO 9001 certificates moved from Engineering Services (with 1211 certificates in 2018) to Basic Metal & Fabricated Metal (with 1109 in 2019). ISO 14001 remained with construction (393 in 2018, 529 in 2019). ISO 45001 was also dominated by construction (55 in 2018, 202 in 2019). ISO 27001 remained with the EA code for Information Technology (251 and an increase to 279 for 2019). Finally, ISO 50001 saw the highest number of certificates for EA codes move from Transport with 14 certificates, to Food Products, Beverages & Tobacco with 13.

Conclusion

All seems positive for the certification industry and the UK continues to lead the way. The only question remains is whether the impact of Covid-19 and Brexit will see a positive reaction as more people invest into certification or a negative one in the 2020 survey.

If you are interested in seeing how Global QA can help with your certification, or have any questions please get in contact at info@global-qa.co.uk

Review our other blogs at Global-QA.co.uk or follow our social media channels @globalqaltd on twitter or @Global QA Consultants on LinkedIn (links below).

Click here to download the ISO Survey 2019 analysis.

For the full report follow this link – ISO Website