Any comapany that haseither ISO9001 and/or ISO14001 will benefit from the disciplined management systems that are required for the 2 standards.

Areas which will be particularly useful are 1); the importance of having identified and approved a second supplier of key parts/materials/services. 2); The skills and knowledge levels of all the employees that have been identified and recorded in some form; thus enabling more flexibility in the work force to cover for any redundancies resulting from Covid 19 .3); the assessment of risks to the business, required by the standard, can readily be reviewed and updated. 4); the quality improvement targets which were set before Covid 19 arrived can be reviewed and up to date performance data communicated to the workforce.

For companies certified to ISO14001, the environmental management standard, possession of the certificate will clearly demonstrate the company’s commitment to improving the environment. This commitment to helping the environment. is likely to be a key issue as companies and the country recover from the lockdown.

For companies who are not currently certified to these 2 standards they should be able to recognise the importance placed on having the required management systems for the standards in place, this will be viewed as an important factor by potential customer who are looking to expand their supplier register.