Case Study - Trinity Mirror

Excellent environmental and health and safety practices were already in place at Trinity Mirror at their newspaper printing sites in Birmingham and Cardiff, but they wanted the recognition for this by gaining certification to ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001.
“We were confident about our environmental and health and safety practices”, said Steve Willis, Regional Health and Safety Manager, “but an independent view would make sure that we had not missed anything. In addition, certification would give our people the recognition for the work they have put in.”

Phil Chambers of SSS reviewed the existing health, safety and environmental practices at Trinity Mirror. “It was immediately apparent,” said Phil,” that Trinity Mirror were very thorough and had a professional approach, with an excellent collection of systems and records. The way the whole company participated was excellent, but there was nothing which gave an overview and tied everything together, something which is a key part of both standards.”

Using the systems already in place, Phil was able to develop an overview system. This did not replace the existing systems; it made reference to them and was essentially an index. “It’s important that systems must be simple, well structured and meet the wishes of the client company,” he said. “Rather than have systems which address the individual clauses in 14001 and 18001, you should have systems structured around how you actually operate, ensuring that 14001 and 18001 requirements are met within them. This ‘process approach’ in now promoted in both standards but it’s alarming how many unreadable manuals I have seen. Because there are many common requirements in both standards, an integrated approach avoids duplication. In addition, you should minimise any additional requirements if they don’t add value.”
The approach taken by Phil was to have systems which are based on flowcharts. This makes the systems easy to follow by both the users and external auditors from the certification bodies, a fact that was commented upon during an external audit.
Though it was not an essential part of gaining certification, Trinity Mirror realised that the INTACT management software would be beneficial, and actually visited one printing company who uses INTACT extensively.

Trinity Mirror were delighted with the ease with which they gained certification.

Some other notes:
Many companies believe that systems for 9001, 14001 and 18001 involve masses of paperwork and require excessive manpower to run them. In the past, this may have been true, but done properly, systems can be simple, easy to understand and can be run without excessive effort.
The two keys to the approach taken are:

Simple flowchart-based systems; it doesn’t need masses of text that nobody can follow.
A computerised integrated action management system called INTACT, which removes the need for most of the paperwork and provides key management information at the click of a button. Effectively, this is your MIS for quality, health and safety and environmental issues. Unlike MIS systems, INTACT has been used in other industries and changes made to suit these industries are beneficial to printing companies.

Both approaches win praise from certification bodies; the whole approach makes their life easier.

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