ISO 22000 Gives Confidence, Helps Manage Rapid Change for ANZ Stadium and Q Catering

ANZ Stadium (Sydney) and Q Catering were recently certified to food safety standard ISO 22000:2005. Representatives from both companies offer insights into the challenges and benefits of the process.

ANZ STADIUM, SYDNEY
QUICK FACTS

ANZ Stadium was built specifically to host the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. As part of the agreement with the NSW Government to hold and maintain the operator’s licence, ANZ Stadium management committed to achieving quality and environmental certification within the venue’s first 12 months of operation.

According to Sue Max, ANZ Stadium's General Manager, Event & Venue Management, the challenge was enormous. “Even before the venue was built and operating, we had to develop a quality assurance system and write policy and procedures for a start-up multi-million dollar business that no one had ever run before,” she said.

French food and management service organisation Sodexho was responsible for overseeing and implementing the food and beverage (F&B) component of the business for eight years. When Sodexho withdrew from its contract in 2007, ANZ Stadium management brought this part of the business in-house on 1 July 2007.

“We inherited a massive F&B function that was both culturally and operationally different from our existing business of running and operating a major sports and entertainment venue,” Max said. “One of the biggest challenges was to understand the nature of the new F&B business, and integrate it into the existing business.”

Sodexho had an integrated management system in place and operated on HACCP food safety principles, which made the integration of the two businesses much easier, according to Max. “We lost some intellectual property in the transition of the business and we had to learn a lot about food safety, which is an extremely complex business in its own right,” she said. “What made it easier was that everything was already well documented and well organised because of the quality systems in place.”

The process of working towards obtaining ISO 22000 certification began in earnest. “We needed to undertake our annual certification as one business rather than as two separate businesses, so we blended the two separate policy manuals, key processes, procedures and policies,” Max (pictured right) explained. Within six months, ANZ Stadium was certified to ISO 22000.

“We are judged on our performance, quality, and safety every time we open our doors to the general public, so it’s essential that we have good processes in place to make sure we’re continually assessing what we do and how we’re doing it,” Max said. “For us, this has been the greatest benefit of having ISO 22000, and integrated management systems generally. Having processes in place to ensure traceability and the ability to investigate, review and amend mean that if we ever had a food safety incident, we could satisfy ourselves and our customers that we had done everything correctly.”

According to Max, embracing standards helps you define your business, and the benefits flow along the supply chain. “It helps you to find like-minded businesses (suppliers) that embrace the same ideals and standards that you do, and you know you’re going to get a consistent level of service and of product quality,” she said. 

Having relevant quality management systems in place makes good business sense and provides a useful legacy for the business, said Max. “As our business has grown and developed, the policies and manuals written by the pioneer team in the early days set the business up well for the future,” she explained. “Our dynamic business is constantly changing and reinventing itself. With audited ISO 22000 management systems in place, the business has ballast and balance and is kept on track.”

According to Max, because each department in the business is responsible for meeting the relevant quality standards, each individual has a sense of ownership and accountability. “Our business is diverse; we have many personnel working on many unrelated activities, from corporate hospitality, tours and events to finance, maintenance, security, ticketing, marketing and IT,” she explained. “While each department has a different focus, what we have in common with each other is that on certain days we come together and aim to deliver a consistent, seamless and quality event experience for our event partners and patrons. Having ISO 22000 and integrated management systems in place is the glue that holds us together as a business.”

“Certification is an important cornerstone of the business transformation process we’re going through,” Meaker explained. “Quality is part of our competitive advantage in the marketplace, and although we are audited regularly by our international customers, we decided we wanted to adopt an internationally recognisable food safety standard.”

Meaker said that one of Q Catering's biggest challenges when tackling ISO 22000 certification was to develop consistency in processes and standards across its seven catering centres nationally. “Even though five of the centres were already certified to ISO 9001, they undertook that process independently,” she said. “We needed to bring the teams together to agree on what was best practice at each of the centres. We wanted to drive continuous improvement through our business and be ‘best in class’.”

Q Catering began to work towards ISO 22000 in the second half of 2007. Representatives from each of the catering centres were involved, and personnel volunteered to lead and champion aspects of the process, such as good manufacturing practice, pest control, purchasing, vendor assurance, microbiological testing and contingency planning.

“We worked closely with our operational personnel to make sure the policies and processes we were writing would actually work,” Meaker (pictured right, with Duncan Lilley of SAI Global) said. “We wanted to make sure our systems were operationally effective, easy to use and reliable.”

To be truly effective, ISO 22000 certification must add value to, and be strategically aligned with, an organisation’s business, according to Meaker. “We saw the benefits of having third-party certification and a national system,” she said. “We didn't want a quality system that sat on the shelf. We wanted employees to embrace and use it, which is why we made sure our operational team helped us to design and review it.”

One of the main benefits during the process was the development of a close team, Meaker said. “It was an opportunity for our personnel to grow and expand their own potential and for different elements of the business to work together with a common purpose,” she explained.

All seven centres were certified to ISO 22000 in June and July 2008.

Although it was a resource-demanding process, the benefits of ISO 22000 certification are already apparent. In the Skytrax World Airline Awards 2008, which are based on surveys of more than 15 million airline passengers, Q Catering customers Qantas won the Best Economy Class Onboard Catering Award, moving up from fifth position in 2007, and Cathay Pacific won the Best First Class Onboard Catering Award.

Many of Q Catering’s customers change their menus once every month or two, creating an environment of constant change for the organisation. “Now we have a really great system to manage it, to make sure all the functional areas are closely involved, and to consolidate quality all the way through the process,” Meaker explained. “Our customers know they’re getting a consistent quality product throughout our network, whatever port they fly from. They can be confident that they’re getting exactly what they specified, whether it’s for first, business or economy class, and that they’re going to have very satisfied passengers.”

Meaker said that third party certification positioned the organisation well in the marketplace. “When looking for new business or when contracts are up for renewal, certification gives people confidence,” she said. “Also, having a third party review your systems with you gives you the opportunity to continuously improve and benchmark.”

This is the second of two articles that examine the international food safety management system standard ISO 22000:2005 and its relevance to Australian industry. View the first article titled “ISO 22000 Caters for Food Safety, Peace of Mind”.

More information for CABs interested in becoming accredited for Food Safety Management Systems, including ISO 22000.

Organisations interested in learning more about the benefits of certification to ISO 22000 can contact CABs accredited by JAS-ANZ for Food Safety Management Systems.