This month, HydroSurv was awarded its ISO 9001:2015 certificate from certification body QMS International which covers the design, build and operation of Uncrewed Surface Vehicles for hydrographic and environmental survey. Reflecting on the hard work all the members of HydroSurv’s team put into achieving this milestone, reminded us of our shared values in taking pride in the quality of our work.
What was also important to us was to ensure that in our efforts to develop excellent business systems underpinning technically challenging engineering or operational projects, we did not change what made our business special. Central to this approach was a paradigm shift that we are not a small version of a large company – as an early-stage venture we needed to make the most efficient use of our resources, and as an innovator in cutting-edge marine robotic technology the chief currency of our business is almost always time.
As a team, we decided the right way to achieve this was to place risk management as the core focus of our business systems. In practice, this means at each stage of our processes, from synthesising user requirements to conducting design reviews or delivering on-water testing we needed to define the level of risk and uncertainty that we, and our customers, were prepared to accept. Then, we needed to put in place controls to ensure we match or exceed those thresholds – consistently.
No two projects at HydroSurv look the same, the level of experimental development which takes place on our research and development projects involves much greater uncertainty than commercial projects. But we needed to develop processes that enable us to do both whilst satisfying the needs of the customers and stakeholders concerned.
Overall, this meant that we learned a lot through this process about what quality management done well looked like as a new-entrant innovator in USV technology – it’s not just the product, it’s everything the company needs to do well from recruitment to inventory control that ensures the customer’s USV does what they need it to do, at a price they can afford to pay, now and in the future.
Most importantly, we did not want this to become documentation without a purpose. We made it our pledge to develop and embed a system that makes a difference to how we do things; and, as we continue to iterate and evolve our processes, we look forward to engaging with our customers and partners to drive us forward, step-by-step on our journey to world-class innovation process.