Quality Management System Policy

To ensure that we meet our customer requirements and needs.

Background and Introduction

Intrepid supports the implementation of a Quality Management system to help ensure that we meet our customer requirements and needs. This involves us fully understanding, supporting and managing our processes, and ensuring that they meet all the requirements of interested parties, including compliance requirements. We have developed procedures, working approaches and controls to provide consistency in our work and to help ensure our quality objectives are met. To this end, as part of our system, we regularly conduct internal retrospectives focused on improvement areas of our business and use the results of these audits to mitigate these risks. We are focused on continuous improvement and we hold regular senior management reviews that are designed to further promote continual improvement and review our progress. We are working towards gaining our ISO 9001 certification so review this policy against any changing standards or requirements.

The approval and revision history of this Policy is recorded, edits are recorded in Confluence and published releases are versioned.

Scope of the Quality System

Intrepid Ltd has defined its scope as a technology professional services company that provides effective innovative solutions to a diverse set of industries. We provide these services through the Intrepid Lines of Business.

Intrepid Lines of Business

The Intrepid Lines of Business group together Intrepid engagements based upon key attributes about how the engagement is sold, delivered, contracted, and invoiced. Details around the ‘outcome’ of the engagement are the main attribute that differentiates one Line of Business from another.

An Intrepid Line of Business is not an Industry (eg. Financial Services). It is based more on how our engagement is delivered and managed and not on who we’re delivering for. The 3 different lines of business are:

  • Staffing - providing people to work on clients sites and projects

  • Projects - owning the outcome of a project, how it is delivered and who delivers it

  • Services - Ongoing support, hosting, monitoring, maintenance and management services

All business lines are in scope for our quality management system.

Intrepid Engagement Map

The Intrepid Engagement Map outlines the high-level journey that a client makes through our processes if they take up our project or service engagement types. Each orange box in the diagram below represents a project engagement and the different types of services on the left indicate which elements of the client journey our different service engagements cover.

Intrepid Engagement Process

All client work that we do passes through the same unified end-to-end engagement process. This allows us to achieve consistent quality throughout and also any enhancements we make to the process apply to all subsequent engagements.

Quality Management System

We run and continually improve our Quality Management System with the aim of achieving the applicable ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems standard. We have determined the processes needed for the quality management system which are documented below. Our Quality Management System is built around creating repeatable and integrated processes for all aspects of our work. We have identified how these processes interact, determined how we can ensure the effective operation and control of these processes, assigned responsibilities and committed resources for each process. Risks and opportunities associated with each process have been determined, and we monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the process and change them if required.

Leadership

Leadership and Commitment

Our Quality Management System is directly supported by senior management and forms our core business delivery approach. This is demonstrable through:

  • Developing and supporting our Quality Management System policy and objectives and making sure they are fully compatible with our context and strategic direction;

  • Promoting process approaches, improvement and risk-based thinking and ensuring the integration of the Quality Management System into our business processes;

  • Providing the resources needed for the Quality Management System are available, and supporting persons to contribute to the effectiveness of the Quality Management System;

  • Ensuring that the Quality Management System achieves its intended results through supporting continual improvement processes, the management review, and actions from the management review;

  • Communicating the importance of effective quality management and of conforming to the Quality Management System requirements;

  • Where appropriate, we look to automate the predictable so we can humanise the exceptional;

  • Ensuring the importance of the Quality Management System Policy is communicated to all Intrepid employees, contractors & service providers and that the relevant processes and procedures are followed appropriately.

Responsibilities & Authority

We have identified the following roles and responsibilities to deliver, maintain and improve our Quality Management System. The interrelationship of departments, functions and personnel is shown in our organisation chart below.

Specific individual Quality System responsibilities are described below, wider responsibilities are described within job descriptions and / or in operating procedures, our continuous improvement programme(s) and other management system related documentation. 

Board of Directors (Top Management)

Directors of Intrepid Ltd have the ultimate responsibility to ensure Intrepid Ltd are legally compliant, the Company is meeting the quality needs of its Customers and Candidates, and that the Quality Management System remains effective and continually improves. Directors are responsible for establishing the appropriate objectives, policies and procedures, resourcing, associated infrastructure, attending Management Reviews, and appointing a Management Representative.

Head of Technology (Management Representative)

The Head of Technology has the responsibility of delivering, implementing and communicating Top Management's plans to ensure the success of the Quality Management System. The Management Representative provides and reports to the Top Management of the performance of the Quality Management System.

Duties include:

  • Ensure processes are established, implemented, maintained and remain appropriate

  • Communicate Policy and Procedures to all staff and verify understanding

  • Report to Top Management on the performance of the Quality System and recommendations for improvement

  • Liaise with external parties on matters relating to the Quality System

  • Arrange and organises the Quality Management retrospective reviews

  • Identifying and monitoring Company compliance to Legal requirements in relation to process, goods, services and production, Company and our customer requirements

  • Identifying Quality System requirements for Suppliers

  • Maintenance of the Quality System Documents and Records

  • Promote continual improvement of the Quality System

  • Manage the Quality System Training Programme and individual’s competencies

  • Provide feedback to all employees of the business

  • Create and share a plan for continual improvement

  • Looking at ISO9001 requirements

Business Manager (Responsible Person)

The Business Manager is the person responsible for conducting audits against the requirements of this Quality Management System, legal requirements and any other requirements associated with the processes being audited.

Duties include:

  • Internal Auditing of the Quality System as prescribed by the Management Representative

  • Identifying noncompliance of the system, processes and auditees against the requirements of our Quality System requirements

  • Identifying opportunities for improvement

  • Reporting to the Management Representative of the results of Audits 

All Employees

All employees are responsible for the following:

  • Adherence to the Quality Manual, Procedures and Processes

  • Reporting of nonconformity and any opportunities for improvement

This forms part of all training and induction and is included in performance reviews/1-2-1’s and lack of adherence can result in the commencement of disciplinary proceedings as outlined in our employee handbook.

Support

Resources

We have determined the resources needed for the effective establishment, implementation, maintenance and continual improvement of the quality management system and are committed to providing them.

People

Our people are our major asset: we have determined and are providing the people necessary for the effective implementation of the management system. We always ensure our people have a clear understanding of their responsibilities and that there is a backup and escalation plan at all levels.

Infrastructure

We provide a high standard of infrastructure appropriate for our operations. This includes software services, cloud infrastructure, and IT operating environments with appropriate controls and hardware. In addition, we ensure that we have an appropriate environment and security controls for the operation of all processes.

Organisational Knowledge

We determine the knowledge needed for our processes and maintain this knowledge through documented processes with sub-procedural how-to guides and implemented workflows in operational software with key automations applied as appropriate to drive consistency and efficiency. We also hold quarterly reviews to identify process anomalies and fix any gaps that are identified through documented changes to the required processes.

Training

The Business Manager is ultimately responsible for the delivery of quality training. Identification of training needs is through assessment of an individual’s ability to perform the task or where the Company identifies a further need.

Training is conducted through various methods, in general these are through the Induction Process, Annual Appraisals, External Courses, Internal Training and Mentoring/Coaching.

We maintain associated records to enable us to identify and evidence competence and training, including this Quality Manual, Records of training (internal & external), Job Descriptions and a Training Matrix.

Awareness

We ensure that all staff and persons doing work under our control are aware of our quality policy, relevant quality objectives, their contribution to the quality management system, and the implications of not conforming with the quality management system requirements.

Communication

Our Quality Management System Policy is a publicly available document available at all times via our company website. Internally, we also ensure that all individuals are made aware of policies upon joining Intrepid. Where changes are made to processes, unless they are automated changes, these are alerted to relevant individuals.

Documented Information

All required information is documented in our knowledge management tool, Confluence. Page properties are utilised to manage versioning and classification.

Technology

Principles

  1. Separation

    1. Stakeholders have separate environments to avoid clashes.

    2. We have four separate environments as standard (Test, QA, UAT and Prod)

    3. Environments are as identical as possible in order to avoid breaking differences.

  2. Review - Peer review.

    1. Code peer review is a fundamental part of what we do.

  3. Automation - We have an automation first policy whereby if something can be automated, we seek to do so.

    1. Infrastructure is automatically created and maintained, never manually.

    2. Releases of software are pushed through all environments before being deployed to production. The identical code is used on each environment, no rebuilds allowed.

    3. All software changes are tested automatically

  4. Accountability - All operations are logged with the user performing the operations.

  5. Privilege - We operate on the principal of least privilege, whereby actors are given the minimum permissions they can do their job with, nothing more.

  6. Best practice - We follow the best practice in terms of security, procedures and tooling.

    1. Trunk based development. We seek to release from main branch as often as possible, without creating long running release branches.

    2. Pull requests are used for all changes to code and infrastructure, and reviewed by at least one other person.

  7. Versioning

    1. Every piece of software we produce has a consistent status page that reveals version information and upstream dependencies.

    2. Calver is used for versioning external releases.

Performance Evaluation

Monitoring, Measurement, Analysis and Evaluation

Processes of the Quality System are monitored and where applicable measured to demonstrate their ability to achieve planned results. Where desired results are not achieved appropriate correction and corrective action are taken in accordance with our documented procedures.

Retrospectives

At Intrepid we run retrospectives in the below areas at regular intervals to collate ideas for how to improve as a company.

  • Engagement Retrospectives

    • Attended by Delivery & Management Teams

    • Held at the end of each client engagement

  • Operations Retrospectives

    • Attended by Operations Team and Leadership

    • Held quarterly

  • Sales Retrospectives

    • ~ as appropriate

  • Overall Retrospectives

    • ~ as appropriate

All feedback will be recorded, documented and implemented to ensure improvements are made each time. The retros for each area are based on the following:

  • Delivery - Focusing on client relationship management, teamwork, process, and issue resolution

  • Technology - Focusing on deployment, infrastructure, and development procedures

  • Operations - Focusing on contracts, communication, recruitment/resourcing, payments

Customer and Candidate Satisfaction

As one of the measurements of the performance of the quality management system, we monitor information relating to customer perception as to whether we have met customer requirements.

Customer and Candidate Complaints

Any Customer or Candidate Complaint is taken seriously and shall be evaluated to ascertain the root cause and to resolve the issue satisfactorily to all parties (if achievable).

We analyse and evaluate the data and information arising from monitoring and measurement. The results of analysis shall be used to inform and improve the management system and our activities.

Continuous Improvement

Continual improvement is a recurring activity that increases our effectiveness and efficiency in fulfilling the requirements of our stakeholders, customers, suppliers, employees, investors, community, etc. The aim of Continual Improvement is to improve our capability to meet requirements and satisfy customers.

To achieve this, we shall continually improve the effectiveness of the Quality System through the use of our Quality Policy, Quality Objectives, Processes and Retrospectives.