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Valley Group gain PAS 2030 and TrustMark

SCOTTISH BUILDING COMPLIANCE & FACILITIES MANAGEMENT PROVIDER

Valley Group are a building compliance and facilities management company headquartered in Glasgow, with 6 divisions including a specialist energy-efficiency arm dedicated to warmer homes.

As the business has grown across Scotland, there has been a need to ensure that the quality of installation standards remains high, which is why they engaged Simply Certification to gain PAS2030 certification.

SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

Valley Group engaged Simply Certification to support with their PAS2030 certification and Trustmark registration as a high percentage of their work comes through public sector housing schemes and has to be Trustmark registered.

Valley Group is dedicated to its own sustainability initiatives and is committed to training and developing its people as a way to future-proof its business. The business places huge emphasis on training and keeping people safe, which is why PAS 2030 was such an important business strategy for them.

Valley Group recognise that safe operating procedures and efficient installations reduce waste and ensure consistency of service, increasing client and end-user satisfaction and saving everyone time and money.

THE CERTIFICATION PROCESS

Valley Group had worked with Simply Certification previously, but the relationship was continued with a new contact in the business.

The certification process included a head office assessment which was focused around checking that processes and procedures were meeting the standard. This was followed by multiple technical inspections to ensure that the processes and procedures were being met in a live environment.

BENEFITS TO VALLEY GROUP

  • Business development: the certifications allow Valley Group to compete for public sector contracts.
  • Training and development: the next generation of operatives are all trained to the quality standards set out by PAS 2030 and Trustmark.
  • Recruitment and talent attraction: holding the certification ensures that Valley Group attract, train and retain people who have pride in what they do and work to a high standard.
  • Reputation: the standards that Valley Group work to ensure that clients and their end users are happy.

 

“Simply Certification really offered me peace of mind. I have over 20 accreditations and memberships to uphold and Simply got that – everything was communicated well. It’s important to me to pick up the phone and be able to achieve something, not just get passed around or having to repeat myself.

Having one point of contact at Simply really meant I could get things done and keep the business moving. This was a new standard to me and the team were supportive- they understood my business and its stakeholders.

This certification is not just about continuous improvement, it helps us secure grants, work with energy providers and build relationships that we simply couldn’t without it.”

Frazer Lowrie, HSQE Manager at Valley Group

Six mighty good reasons to gain MCS, PAS 2030 and TrustMark

The need for more PAS 2030 certified and TrustMark registered contractors is growing rapidly.

With a target for the UK to reach Net Zero by 2050 one of the key requirements is to address the issue of poor energy efficiency performance in homes.

The link to soaring energy prices, unhealthy homes due to damp and mould and a cost of living crisis is also driving more landlords and home owners to invest into the retrofit of their properties with insulation measures and renewable technologies.

24 Million Homes and Six Funding Schemes

There is an estimated 24 million domestic properties and currently six funding schemes that need contractors that have the relevant certification and proven competency.

So the opportunity is HUGE.

What are the funding schemes?

  1. Green Rewards – Brand new initiatives have been launched and there is likely to be more. This is non-government funding, aimed at the able to pay market; banks and building societies are releasing loans and cash back rewards to encourage home owners to retrofit their homes from TrustMark registered businesses.
  2. Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund – We have established relationships with primary contractors who have been successful in securing funding for SHDF. They have asked Simply Certification to introduce our clients once certified, as they are extending their supply chains to deliver larger schemes.
  3. ECO4 – Currently under the fourth wave The Energy Company Obligation is aimed at lower income homes that need multiple energy efficiency measures installed to help combat fuel poverty.
  4. ECO Plus – Get ready for the complementary scheme to ECO4 which is currently under consultation and due to start in the Spring.
  5. Home Upgrade Grant (HUG) – The HUG scheme is designed for the improvement of energy performance and heating systems for off gas grid homes in England.
  6. Local Authority Delivery (LAD) – Currently under the third phase LAD schemes are managed by local authorities to target low income homes in their area.

To qualify to deliver under these you will need to be a TrustMark registered business and hold the relevant certification for the measures or technologies that you install.

The future

We know the wider importance to stop homes damaging the planet.

We also know that homeowners and tenants are trying to reduce their spend on energy costs.

We know that properties that are poorly ventilated are causing damage to the health of the occupiers.

All of these reasons are forcing a serious and committed drive for change and a significant increase in the UK supply chain of certified installers.

If you are a contractor that delivers home improvements, then being part of this supply chain will not only future proof your business and open up opportunities but you will also be supporting a cause that will protect the most vulnerable as well as helping to achieve Net-Zero and protect our environment.

More information?

Contact our friendly team who will take you through the various options:

T: 0191 323 3960

E: hello@simplycertification.co.uk

 

 

Gain TrustMark Licence Plus with Simply

Simply Certification, providers of certification across the Lifecycle of the Built Environment are excited to announce that we now offer TrustMark Licence Plus.

Current schemes such as ECO4, LADs, HUG and SHDF require PAS 2030/35 certification and TrustMark registration; Licence Plus is designed for future schemes and the able to pay market which may not need the PAS 2035 element that PAS 2030 certification requires.

To operate within the Licence Plus scheme, Licence Plus contractors will need to be a TrustMark registered business and undergo assessments to ensure high quality installations that protect the customer.

Alex Gates, Simply Certification’s Managing Director explains;

“We’re excited to be one of the first certification bodies to offer this, as one of our key priorities is to help extend the supply chain to help meet the UK’s net-zero targets.”

“We’ve been working closely with a number of primary contractors and TrustMark on various initiatives to help drive up the numbers within the UK supply chain and are already starting to see an increase of new contractors into this sector, which is an amazing achievement.”

“Improving Energy Efficiency through quality retrofitting”

Simon Ayers, CEO, TrustMark explains,

“We are facing one of the biggest challenges around reducing energy consumption and making homes in the UK warmer, more comfortable and healthier to live in at a time when we have a cost of living crisis, coupled with a shortage of skilled trades. Improving energy efficiency through quality retrofitting is key to helping reduce this burden but it must be done by competent tradespeople working to measurable standards to ensure the result fits the need.

The demand for businesses has never been higher and will only continue to increase. This demand, coupled with the current skills shortage, means we have to look for broader solutions. We believe that the Licence Plus Scheme can be part of that solution, so it’s great to have Simply Certification on board, offering Licence Plus registration to their businesses.”

Certification across the Built Environment Lifecycle

Simply Certification who were launched in August 2020 are quickly becoming the certification body of choice for organisations who operate across the lifecycle of the built environment which includes 4 key stages:

  1. Pre Construction and Design
  2. Construction
  3. Operations, Facilities Management and Retrofit
  4. End of Use

“We ensure a great assessment experience that adds real value”

Alex concludes;

“Our offering is extremely attractive to organisations who operate within any one of the stages of the Built Environment Lifecycle.

“Particularly those who are aligned with net-zero strategies. We have a strong focus on supporting organisations in their quality, environment and health and safety certifications. We have aligned our service to meet these needs which includes delivering assessments and certification for ISO and SSIP as well as TrustMark, PAS 2030, PAS 2038, Licence Plus and soon MCS.

Our unique offering is that we can coordinate assessment plans that keep disruption to a minimum and ensure great value by having a collaborative approach.

We ensure a great assessment experience that adds real value and aids ongoing business improvement with plans that are integrated where possible – a great offering for a sector that requires to demonstrate such high degrees of compliance and certification”

For more information about TrustMark and Licence Plus, contact our team today:
0191 3233960
hello@simplycertification.co.uk

Simply Changing and Evolving

We’re excited to announce that following a successful 2022, we have made some changes to our structure to support the business in its next phase of growth.

Compliance and Operations Manager

Lyndsey Gates will now take overall responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the Head Office as Compliance and Operations Manager. This last 12 months, Lyndsey has done an outstanding job in supporting the business from a compliance aspect working closely with TrustMark and UKAS. She has naturally started to oversee the running of the customer service aspect towards the end of the 2022. This change in role now formalises Lyndsey’s position, enabling her to start to plan the growth of the team for 2023 to support the new products and services that will be released over the next few months.

PAS 2030 and MCS Scheme Manager

Richard Wiffen one of our Technical Assessors has now moved up to be our PAS 2030 and MCS Scheme Manager and will be responsible for the team of assessors that fall under these standards. Richard will be responsible for managing both contracted and direct employed field based assessors, supporting the employee onboarding process and working closely with Lyndsey to fulfil all compliance requirements around the schemes. Richard has proven to be a wonderful asset to Simply; along with his exceptional assessment and people skills this new role will make even better use of his knowledge and capabilities.

Managing Director

Alexandra Gates has taken over as Managing Director from 3 January 2023, allowing Austin Gibbons to take on strategic projects around compliance, certification and technologies continuing to build our portfolio of services whilst formally delivering the Finance Director role for the business. Alex will continue to lead the growth of the business through strategic partnerships and work closely with Austin to execute the new initiatives.

What an eventful start to 2023 for Team Simply!

Saviour Energy PAS 2030 Case Study

PAS 2030 Case Study

The Need

Saviour Energy Solutions launched in 2014 and have been delivering the retrofit of energy efficiency measures under various funding schemes to help drive down fuel poverty.

Having gained PAS 2030:2017 around 5 years ago, Saviour continued on with their existing certification body.

As the business began to grow, they started to attract opportunities from a number of local authorities which required evidence of compliance to ISO 9001.

The Pain

After searching for an alternative certification body, they found Simply Certification who offered both PAS 2030 and ISO 9001.

Khawar Aziz , Saviour’s Director states;

“We were finding the lack of communication we were receiving from our provider at the time increasingly frustrating.

From the moment we got in touch with Simply we realised that this was a certification body that was much more in line with what we needed.

Not only did they offer management system certification they also offered PAS 2030.”

Khawar goes onto say;

“We were feeling let down with our other provider due to lack of responsiveness and compliance is vital to us so felt that we would also enlist the services of Simply for PAS 2030.”

The Outcome

“We have gained certification with Simply for PAS 2030 and the process was such a different experience to what we have had previously.

It was a nice experience working with Simply. Especially, Lyndsey whom I called and interacted during this whole process. She was always ready to help.

Communication is so important when providing a service such as certification and I felt that Simply excelled at this.

The assessments were invaluable to us by supporting with our continuous improvement and compliance.

We’re really looking forward to a continued relationship with Simply.”

Simply’s growth and technical capability increases further

growth through certification

It’s exciting times for Simply Certification with two experienced Retrofit Coordinators and insulation experts joining the team very soon; increasing coverage for PAS 2030 measures across the UK.

Alex Gates, Simply’s Strategy and Marketing Director explains;

“As a certification body we are wanting to create real value and it’s vital that our compliance, customer service and assessors are the best in class so that our customers get real value for money.

Our recent recruitment drive has enabled us to benefit from onboarding technical inspectors for gas, electric and now insulation across the UK. We have a dedicated team who carry out head office assessments that meet UKAS requirements and ensure that our clients have a seamless assessment experience for their technical inspections.”

Alex continues;

“Our customer base since January has increased by 80% which is a testament to the wonderful team we have in place. Our key focus is to deliver a responsive, supportive and value lead service and we believe that is exactly what we are achieving.

Our roadmap of growth for the rest of this year includes further scope extensions, the launch of our world-wide assessor program, growing management system certification and bringing on more skilled and talented assessors to service our growing customer base.

It’s certainly a very exciting time for us all and we’re really looking forward to working with more organisations not only across the UK but globally so that they can demonstrate compliance in their chosen discipline.”

TrustMark welcomes latest Scheme Provider, Simply Certification

TrustMark Scheme Provider

Press Release from TrustMark 16 February 2022

The latest UK certification organisation to receive UKAS accreditation has joined TrustMark as a new Scheme Provider.

Simply Certification provides UKAS certification for a variety of organisations who operate within the Construction supply chain including the Eco and Decarbonisation sector for new and existing buildings.

Certifications include PAS 2030 (Eco efficient installer), ISO 9001 (Quality Management), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management), ISO 45001 (Health and Safety) and ISO 19650 (Building Information Modelling).

Simply Certification was launched in August 2020 by its founder members, all of whom come from the certification industry. Their aim is to simplify the certification process where possible and ensure that the assessment experience is not unnecessarily overcomplicated.

Alongside assessing certifications for domestic retrofit installations, they also recently launched a service around PAS 2038 (Assessment and Design of the Retrofit of Energy Efficiency Measures for Commercial Building Stock) and are working with some large national contractors to help them and their supply chain become compliant.

Now that Simply Certification is a TrustMark Scheme Provider, their customers will be able to gain both certifications for PAS 2030 and become a TrustMark Registered Business as part of the services offered.

Simon Ayers, CEO TrustMark said,

“Simply Certification is a welcome addition to TrustMark. Their focus on quality and compliance aligns with our own and further strengthens the drive for improvement. The team’s emphasis on working collaboratively with their businesses and supporting them through a robust but straightforward approach to achieving certification helps to achieve continual improvement as well as the end goal. As retrofitting our homes increases in importance, services offered by organisations like Simply Certification to the construction industry are integral in achieving the quality and standards required in this vital area. We look forward to working with them.”

Austin Gibbons, Managing Director at Simply Certification added,

“Having worked within compliance for a number of years supporting organisation to gain certification, I have first-hand experience of the frustrations of trying to gain and maintain certification. We’re very excited to be able to provide a certification service that installers and contractors feel is of great value. It’s so important that our customers feel like customers and have a positive experience with us.

“We are seeing the growing need for PAS 2030 certification and TrustMark Registration within the construction sector as it is becoming recognised that meeting these requirements demonstrates high quality for retrofit installation. We’re excited to become a TrustMark Scheme Provider and to be able to offer another level of quality to our customers.”

UKAS Accreditation, Simply the best achievement of the year

PAS 2030 UKAS

In August 2020 Simply Certification was launched. Our mission? To be the certification body of choice due to our exceptional customer service and value lead approach.

After a rigorous and robust assessment process Simply Certification, were granted accreditation by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) just before Christmas 2021.

Ecstatic to become a UKAS accredited Certification Body

Managing Director Austin Gibbons explains;

“We are ecstatic to become a UKAS accredited Certification Body. The team have worked extremely hard and have demonstrated such passion and commitment throughout the process.

We are now able to offer our clients PAS 2030 accredited certification across a range of measures.

Our key mission is to grow within the construction, built environment and decarbonisation sectors which drives our product offering and focus on accreditation.”

Fresh bright and energetic

Alex Gates, Simply’s Co Founder and Director of Strategy and Marketing goes on to say;

“We were very fortunate to be able to start off with a blank canvas in terms the type of organisation we wanted to create.

We all came from the world of compliance and have a great understanding of the perception and frustrations organisations had when dealing with certification bodies, so it was our chance to launch a fresh certification service that would break this mould.

The fresh, bright, and energetic look and feel of Simply reflects the organisation’s inner core values and what our clients would expect when dealing with us.

The feedback we have received to date is fantastic. Our clients are experiencing great communication, an enjoyable assessment experience and feeling they are gaining great value – which is exactly what we set out to do.”

A range of certifiable standards

“We fully understand the frustrations that organisations have trying to maintain certification for a range of requirements.

I’m really excited as we offer a great range of certifiable standards such as ISO 9001 (Quality) and ISO 14001 (Environmental) alongside PAS 2030.

This is a great package for our customers to demonstrate compliance and best practice which opens up great opportunities under a range of funding schemes and contracts.”

The future

The business is going from strength to strength with new customers on-boarding every day. Austin concludes;

“As part of us establishing ourselves within the built environment sector we’ve been working with worldwide partners delivering ISO 19650 certification and launching our package of training, gap analysis and certification for PAS 2038 .

This is an extremely exciting time for Team Simply, we’ve achieved so much in the last 18 months and we’re really looking forward to an exceptionally busy 2022.”

Join our team!

Join an energetic, collaborative and high growth certification body

Due to our growth we are needing more assessors to join our fantastic team.

Who we are

Quite “simply” we provide certification across a range of standards:

 

Our five core values are:

  • Collaborative
  • Innovative
  • Responsiveness
  • Supportive
  • Value lead

We believe that having all five of these core values is what sets us apart from other certification bodies.

Our customer orientated approach means that our customers get a refreshing approach to their certification services. Our assessments are robust, impartial and thorough following UKAS standards.

Who we are looking for

We are looking to grow our team significantly as our customer base is growing across the UK and Globally:

PAS 2030/35 Technical Assessors

We are looking for a number of assessors across the UK to join our team to provide head office and technical assessments for Insulation, Gas and Electrical installations under PAS 2030/35

We would be looking for the following competencies:

  • Evidence of training within PAS 2030 such as an Awareness Course
  • GDA or DEA or Equivalent Course (Retrofit Assessor)
  • Lead auditor training
  • Relevant qualifications for measures required
    • Gas – Gas Safe Card
    • Electrical – 18th Edition and ECS Card
    • Insulation – NVQ Level 2 in Insulation and Building Treatments
    • Glazing – NVQ in Glazing and FENSA  Registration
  • Minimum of two years’ experience within Eco Industry
  • Minimum of two years’ experience inspecting, assessing or technical monitoring

Apply using our online application.

ISO 9001/14001/45001 Assessors

We are looking for a number of assessors across the UK to join our Management System team. We are looking for cross competent auditors to help our customers streamline audit programs across the three standards.

Ideally we are looking for the following

  • Relevant subject degree
  • IRCA ISO Lead Auditor
  • Prince, APM, Six Sigma
  • Have a varied breadth of industry sector experience, ideally across the relevant EA industries
  • Minimum of two years’ experience conducting certification audits
  • Two additional years’ work experience in the operation or assessment of relevant Management Systems

Apply using our online application

ISO 19650 Assessors

We are looking for a number of assessors that can carry out remote audits for ISO 19650. We are looking for existing BIM consultants/trainers with in-depth knowledge to become an assessor against the ISO standard.

  • Relevant subject degree
  • IRCA ISO Lead Auditor
  • Have a varied breadth of industry sector experience for BIM
  • Minimum of two years’ experience conducting audits
  • Two additional years’ work experience in the operation or assessment of relevant Management Systems

Apply by sending your CV to hello@simplycertification.co.uk

 

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