We share a lot of success stories here on the ISO Show, along with hints, tips and updates to Standards, including insights from our consultants who work with Standards day in and day out.

In our latest mini-series, we're taking a step back to introduce members of our team, to explore how they fell into the world of ISO and discuss the common challenges they face while helping clients achieve ISO certification.

In this episode we introduce Darren Morrow, a Senior Consultant at Blackmores, to learn about his journey towards becoming an ISO Consultant and what drives him to help clients on their ISO journey.

You'll learn

· What is Darren's role at Blackmores?

· What does Darren enjoy outside of consultancy?

· What path did Darren take to become an ISO Consultant?

· What is the biggest challenge he's faced when implementing ISO Standards?

· What is Darren's biggest achievement?

Resources

· Isologyhub

· Engagement Amplifier Gameplan

In this episode, we talk about:

[00:30] Episode Summary – We introduce Darren Morrow, a Senior Consultant here at Blackmores, to discuss his journey towards becoming an ISO consultant who specialises in ISO 9001, ISO 45001, ISO 14001 and ISO 50001.

[03:45] What is Darren's role at Blackmores? Darren is a Senior Consultant with Blackmores, supporting companies with maintaining systems, undertaking internal audits, and supporting with implementing new systems to gain certification.

A key part of his role is translating ISO Standards into plain English, and guides clients on how to apply them in practice.

[04:55] What does Darren enjoy doing outside of consultancy?: Darren moved to Norfolk back in 2021 ans has since found the relaxed way of life there to be a great fit.

It also offers a lot of good walking opportunities for his 2 Leonberger's (giant breed dogs), who mostly enjoy the local parks and beach walks.

Darren is also an avid reader, clocking in a whopping 343 weeks' worth of reading on his kindle. His favourite genres include:-

· Crime, thriller, adventure types - Clive Cussler, Michael Connelly, David Baldacci, CJ Box, Dan Brown, James Carol

· Horror - James Herbert, Stephen King

· Supernatural, urban fantasy, fantasy - Ben Aaronvitch, Jim Butcher, Raymond E Feist, C S Lewis & Tolkien

· Historical - CJ Sansom, SJ Parris

· And Terry Pratchett for a weird dose of reality.

He's also a movie buff, with a collection of over 1,000 films ranging from the 1930's all the way to modern era. Recently he took on the challenge of watching all the Marvel films in chronological order, which took a few weeks!

[10:35] What was Darren's path towards becoming an ISO Consultant?: Before Blackmores, Darren was the Quality Manager for a company that worked within the Highways Maintenance sector, working there for 8 years.

For the first 18 months he was primarily the Quality Manager for a specific contract on the Olympic Park, as that contract came to an end, he moved into the main company Quality Manager role supporting multiple highway term maintenance contracts along with various smaller projects that the business won.

Prior to that, he was a SHEQ Advisor within the Rail industry, working for a signaling company. Darren worked there for about 5 years, within head office support roles for quality and health and safety, moving to working on supporting the project teams and project delivery for signaling schemes.

Overall, looking back, he's worked with standards within a quality, health & safety, environmental for around 25 years now.

[13:20] What is Darren's favourite aspect of being a Consultant? – Darren likes the variety.

As an ISO Consultant, he gets to work with lots of different people, companies and industries, so he gets to learn a lot about how they work and how Standards apply to different industries.

He also enjoys the fact that after working with clients for a number of years, he becomes just another member of the team.

[15:15] What Standards does Darren specilaise in and why? Starting with:

· ISO 9001 Quality: This is the main standard that Darren starting working with back in 1999

· ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety: While working within rail, Darren was given the opportunity to do some training and proceeded to complete NEBOSH courses - general and construction, this proved invaluable in future roles.

· ISO 14001 Environmental: Darren ended up working with this Standard as part of on-going development. His role as a Quality Manager expanded, and at the time, all external audits with our certification body were coordinated through him. So, for on-going development he completed the NEBOSH environmental managed certificate.

· ISO 50001 Energy Management: This is one of Darren's favourites. He's taken on this standard since working with Blackmores and seemed like a natural progression with the work he was already doing. He likes how this standard helps companies think more about their impacts on the environment in terms of energy consumption.

In terms of companies climate change impacts, Darren likes how ISO 50001 can support deep dives into data that is available or not clearly available in many cases to support improvement and reduction in energy consumption.

This also can pave the way for those companies that take it more seriously, and progress to newer standards like ISO14064-1 for quantification and reporting of greenhouse gases, but also part 3 for the verification and validation of greenhouse gases.

This is where our sister company, Carbonology Ltd, really excel. Darren does his bit with ISO 50001 clients to educate and prepare them for taking more proactive steps towards meaningful energy and carbon reporting. For example, if they grow sufficiently or fall within the parameters of mandatory schemes such as ESOS or SECR reporting, or they just want to do their bit and demonstrate their commitment to minimising their impact on the environment and overall energy consumption.

[23:10] What is the biggest challenge Darren had faced during a project and how did he overcome it?: He doesn't have a single one that stands out, but common issues are usually either down to availability or commitment of the individuals within the company he's supporting.

For example, the company may decide that they require certification to a standard or multiple standards. There will be commitment from some within the business, and there are those that may not see the importance or feel it's not important to them and what they do.

Darren's job is to support the company in achieving its main goal in gaining certification. His work with the company involved explaining what is to be done and why. He's found that most of any resistance is because individuals do not know the why and how it impacts them, etc.

The other aspect is to make it clear that he is not there to tell them what to do, or that they're doing it wrong. He works with people to either document the process (where required), help them find improvement in the process and continue to search for improvement.

[27:00] What is Darren's proudest achievement? Darren states that there's no one definitive achievement to highlight, rather he would say supporting clients who are new to the standards. Working with them and providing knowledge so that they know the 'why' and understand the standards and their processes, and finally seeing the end result with being recommended for certification.

The ones that he's particularly happy with are those that go for multiple standards, that result in recommendation for certification with little or no significant findings from the certification body, it shows that the company has been fully engaged and embedded the overall process into how they work.

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