Tender-Ready ISO Compliance

Customer story

North Product Design: certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 27001

A Lancashire product design studio, their first ever ISO assessment, and two certificates that open the door to work they could not bid for before.

ISO 9001:2015 Quality management
ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Information security
0 nonconformities at Stage 1
1 integrated management system, run in PICMS

North Product Design (NPD) is a product design studio in Samlesbury, Lancashire. NPD set out to achieve ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 together, as one integrated management system.

Georgina Partington, NPD's Operations Director, ran the system day to day in PICMS. Their policies, risks, internal audits, corrective actions, training records and management reviews all lived in one place, with the evidence mapped to each clause of both standards. Georgina also used it to run her own ISO training session for the team.

NPD then went through the full two-stage certification audit with QECUK, a partner of the certification body Peers Quality Assurance (PQAL):

Stage 1, September 2026: the documentation review, passed with no nonconformities.
Stage 2, October 2026: the on-site audit of how the system works in practice, after which the auditor recommended NPD for certification.
November 2026: NPD received their UKAS-accredited certificates to ISO 9001:2015 and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 from PQAL.

NPD's clients work in defence, medical devices and energy storage, where buyers expect a supplier to show both quality and information security. With both certificates in hand, NPD can now answer "yes" to the ISO questions that used to rule them out of tenders.

Read NPD's own announcement on LinkedIn

PICMS has become central to how we manage quality and information security at npd. It's intelligent, organised and genuinely simple to use, and it keeps me on top of every control across both our ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 systems. Because the platform is so responsive, we're constantly finding new ways to use it, and it grows with us rather than holding us back.

There's no doubt PICMS played a huge part in our recent success in achieving both ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certification. Much of that comes down to Jason, its developer. He's knowledgeable, supportive and forward-thinking, and he responds quickly and thoughtfully to the real needs of our business. PICMS is making a real difference to the way we run npd, and I'd recommend it to any organisation serious about getting, and staying, on top of its ISO obligations.
Georgina Partington, Operations Director, North Product Design Ltd

North Product Design did the work and earned the certificates; QECUK, a PQAL partner, audited them and Peers Quality Assurance (PQAL) issued the certificates. PICMS is the software they used to run their management system and prepare. PICMS supports audit preparation; it does not determine audit outcomes.

Why it matters

Where tenders check for ISO

Selection questionnaires and PQQs filter suppliers before anyone compares prices. The questions vary by buyer, but the same few come up again and again:

Quality management: do you hold ISO 9001, or can you show an equivalent system with policies, audits and corrective actions?
Information security: if you will handle the buyer's data, do you hold ISO 27001 or Cyber Essentials?
Health and safety and environment: in construction and facilities work, ISO 45001 and ISO 14001 often sit alongside SSIP schemes such as CHAS.

A certificate answers the question in one line. Without one, you either write pages of evidence for every tender or you are scored out. And a certificate has to be kept: the certification body comes back for surveillance audits, so the system has to keep running after the first audit is passed.

How PICMS helps

One system for the audit and the tender

Evidence mapped to each clause

Every document and record is linked to the clauses it evidences, so you can see what an auditor will find and where the gaps are.

Several standards, one system

Run ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 together, as NPD did with 9001 and 27001, instead of keeping separate binders.

Internal audits and corrective actions

Plan internal audits, raise findings, and close corrective actions with the evidence and effectiveness check a Stage 2 auditor samples.

Controlled documents

Policies and procedures with versions, approvals and read-and-sign, so the copy you cite in a tender is the current one.

Readiness you can see

A live readiness score and gap analysis per standard show how close you are before you book the certification body.

Built by an auditor

PICMS was built by an IRCA Registered Principal Auditor, around what certification auditors actually ask to see.

What PICMS does not do

PICMS does not issue certificates and cannot guarantee an audit result. Only an independent certification body can audit you and certify you, and the work of running the system is yours. What PICMS does is give that work one home, so nothing an auditor or a buyer asks for is scattered across inboxes and spreadsheets.

FAQ

Questions about tender-ready compliance

What does tender-ready compliance mean?

It means the certificates, policies and records a buyer asks for at the selection stage already exist and are current, so a tender answer is a matter of citing them rather than writing them. For most UK buyers that starts with ISO 9001, and for work involving their data, ISO 27001 or Cyber Essentials.

Does PICMS certify my business to ISO 9001 or ISO 27001?

No. Only an independent certification body can audit you and issue a certificate. PICMS is where you build and run the management system the auditor examines: documents, risks, internal audits, corrective actions and management reviews, with evidence mapped to each clause.

How did North Product Design use PICMS?

North Product Design ran their integrated ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 management system in PICMS, prepared for their certification audits in it, and received UKAS-accredited certificates to both standards in November 2026. It was their first ever ISO assessment.

Can I answer tender questions from the records in PICMS?

Yes. PQQ and selection questionnaires ask for much of what an ISO auditor samples: your quality and information security policies, risk assessments, training records, supplier controls and how you handle complaints and incidents. Keeping them in one system means a tender answer and an audit sample come from the same records.

Get the ISO certificates tenders ask for, and keep them.