Starting young: in conversation with Sophie Jones, a standards award winner with an unusually early beginning in standards

After CAA International (CAAi) scooped a top award at last year’s BSI Standards Users Awards, we caught up with Head of Operations and Training, and BSI Member, Sophie Jones. She discussed her childhood introduction to standards, the recent award win, and how she sees BS EN ISO 9001 contributing to the future of her organisation. But let’s start at the beginning.

How did your journey with standards begin?

“My experience with standards actually goes back before my career even started. My father was a sales director when ISO 9001 was first issued, and I remember encountering the standard as a child when helping my dad in the office!”

So your Dad must be pretty proud of your recent BSI Standards User award? Can you talk a bit about your win last year?

“All of the CAAi aviation training courses we delivered for aviation authorities and the aviation industry across the globe prior to 2020 were face to face. From a customer feedback perspective, we have a target of achieving an 8 out of 10 rating, which we’ve continued to maintain over the years.

“Following Covid, we quickly moved our training portfolio to around a 95% virtual offering. We were conscious that the customer feedback target score we had set ourselves was quite a difficult one given that we were moving to an entirely new virtual environment. Added to this, a lot of our training is quite technical and activity-based and we’d traditionally had resistance to moving our training portfolio to virtual.

“However, with the support of BS EN ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems, we managed to switch our training portfolio to a virtual environment within 4-6 weeks, while maintaining a minimum of 8 out of 10 through the whole period.”

How are you delivering training in the post-Covid world?

“While we’ve been delivering face-to-face training again since October last year, we’re continuing with the virtual offering because it works well for us, enables us to have a breadth of delivery options, and enables us to work with partners further overseas. The award was delivered because we were able to maintain the training service despite the two other areas of CAAi being impacted heavily, and all while maintaining our customer feedback score.”

Tell us a bit about the work of the CAAi and your role there

“As an aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is responsible for everything from ensuring safety in the UK’s skies, to reducing the environmental impact of aviation on local communities. The CAA is very much about airports, airlines and airspace in the UK, however a significant amount of the UK public fly beyond the UK borders.

“This is why the CAAi was set up in 2007 – to help to improve safety standards for other regulators by using practicing UK regulators. We have now provided advice, training, examination and licensing services in over 140 countries.

“My team leads the internal audits, ensures the group as a whole is complying and that documents are reviewed when they need to be reviewed, and makes sure we’re conducting all of the governance and management reviews. From a career perspective, joining the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was really when my work with BS EN ISO 9001 began, as the standard covers all of that.”

How has the CAA’s work with standards evolved over the years?

“When I first joined the CAA we were ISO compliant, but have since moved with the standard as it’s developed, and expanded the scope and remit to other areas within the international group.

“Compliance with the standard is also a requirement for a lot of the contracts we deal with. We work with the Department for Transport, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and a number of other large organisations that require ISO 9001 compliance – so for us it’s a really important and valuable thing to have. It also important in making us accountable internally.

“CAAi was the first and largest part of the business to be certified to BS EN ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems. CAAi provides advisory training services, examinations and eTools across the globe to other regulators. That can include providing regulators from the UK to help regulators in other countries to improve aviation standards.

“Since then, other parts of the CAA have been certified. Firstly, our international strategy team, who very much work with European partners and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). This is mostly around coordination, engagement, and influencing from a regulator-to-regulator perspective. Then we have our State Safety Partnerships team, who are non-regulatory and work with airlines and regulators primarily to develop partnership agreements.

“In March, this year we extended the ISO compliance to the Airfield Advisory Team. The team is a non-regulatory service that supports smaller airports in the UK with advice and guidance. Finally, we have our Environment Research and Consulting Department, which is primarily working with the larger airports in the UK around issues like noise.”

What does the future hold in store for the CAAi?

“We have two departments left within the international group – the innovation team and an air safety unit – that we’d like to incorporate within the existing BS EN ISO 9001 standard. We’ll also be looking at the other standards that could be applicable to us, and how we implement those.”

Thank you, Sophie. And good luck with your continuing standards journey in the International Group at the CAA.

To learn more about BS EN ISO 9001 and how it can support your business, visit the BSI Shop, where you can purchase a standalone version of the standard, or select a bundle of standards designed to help you implement a robust quality management system.

If you have any other questions about BS EN ISO 9001, BSI members can get in touch with the Knowledge Centre’s information experts.