Quality Management

There are two kinds of quality management system. One lives in a folder, gets dusted off three weeks before the surveillance visit, and tells you almost nothing about how the business is performing. The other is how the business runs. We build the second kind, for manufacturers, maintenance organisations and distributors working to AS9100, AS9110, AS9120 and ISO 9001 — whether you are approaching first certification, recovering from a poor audit, or carrying a system made unusable by fifteen years of amendments.

Designing a system people will use

A standard tells you what must be controlled. It does not tell you how your business should work, and that is where most systems go wrong — processes written to mirror clause numbers rather than the flow of a job through your plant. We start from your operation and map the standard onto it, so the documentation describes what actually happens.

What that involves depends on where you are starting, but typically:

• Gap analysis against the applicable standard, with findings ranked by risk rather than listed alphabetically
• Process architecture and documentation in plain language, at the level of detail the task genuinely needs
• Risk management, configuration control and special process controls set proportionately for your scope
• Non-conformance, root cause and corrective action that closes problems instead of recording them
• Performance measures and management review that give the leadership team information worth acting on
• Preparation for your certification body's assessment, including internal audit and objective evidence

Internal and supplier audits

We audit on your behalf in two capacities. Internal (first-party) audits give you a competent, detached look at your own system — useful when your audit programme has fallen behind, when the internal team is too close to the process, or when you want a genuine dry run before assessment. Second-party audits are the ones you carry out on your own supply chain: approval audits on new suppliers, surveillance on existing ones, and investigation when a supplier's performance has become a problem you cannot diagnose from purchase order data.

To be clear about the boundary: Brigham does not perform third-party or certification audits, and nothing we do replaces your certification body. That separation is deliberate, and it is what allows us to help you prepare.

Who does the work

Anna Lavender-Moore leads the quality practice. She is an Aerospace Experienced Auditor and a BS EN 9100 Lead Auditor, was Operational Excellence Manager at Moog, and held senior compliance roles at UTC Aerospace. Her MSc in Organisational and Business Psychology is more relevant here than it sounds — the hardest part of a management system is rarely the document, it is getting a workforce to care about it. Where the quality problem is really a flow problem, Doug Allen's operational side of the practice picks it up.

Frequently asked questions

Our system passes audit but nobody follows it. Can that be fixed?

Yes, and it is one of the more common reasons businesses call. The usual cause is a system written for the auditor rather than the user, so it is simultaneously too long and not useful. Rebuilding it around real process flow — and cutting documentation that exists for no reason — makes it both easier to follow and easier to defend.

We have a major non-conformance to close. Can you help at short notice?

Often, yes. The priority is a corrective action that addresses the actual cause, with evidence of effectiveness, rather than a containment action dressed up as a fix. We will tell you honestly if the timescale you have been given is not achievable, and what the realistic options are.

Can you run part of our internal audit programme?

Yes. Internal audits are taken on as a defined piece of work, and it is common for us to cover part of the annual programme rather than all of it. We would rather also train your own people to audit competently, so the capability stays in the business — see the training page for how that works.