British Ambassador to Qatar Nicholas Hopton presents the ISO 9001:2008 certificate to Abdullah al-Attiyah, acting executive director of Supreme Committee’s Programme Management Office.

British Ambassador to Qatar, Nicholas Hopton, yesterday presented a certificate to the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy’s (SC) Programme Management Office (PMO), acknowledging its achievement of the prestigious quality management award, ISO 9001:2008.

The ISO 9001 is an internationally-acclaimed award from the British Standards Institution (BSI) which acknowledges the successful implementation of a quality management system. The complete system ensures consistency in planning, control, quality assurance and quality improvement, and is implemented through a series of standards which are applied to an organisation’s structure, policies, procedures, processes and resources.
Delivering the keynote speech at the award ceremony, Hopton said: “On behalf of the British government, I’d like to congratulate the PMO on this major achievement.  The SC is already a world-class organisation, so it is a privilege and a delight that the PMO has now been recognised by the British Standard Institute. This is a prestigious award which can only be achieved by the successful completion of a rigorous implementation process, but, in the long term, this will be regarded as effort well spent as it will help the SC create a sustainable legacy in terms of project management and expertise – not just for the country, but also for the region. The British government continues to fully support the SC every step of the way, especially with the expertise that we gained from our London Olympic Games in 2012.” 
Abdullah al-Attiyah, PMO acting executive director, said: “This is an outstanding achievement for the PMO and the SC, given that the BSI is world-renowned and that the award has so much credibility. The BSI challenged us a lot, but we greatly benefited from it as we continue to oversee and contribute towards the successful delivery of the whole programme for 2022. Quality and continuous improvement are at the core of what we do, and now we’ve been given a head start by being able to send a message to everyone that, like safety, delivering quality needs to be a habit, and not a coincidence.” 
Mark Basham, Group MD, EMEA, British Standard Institute (BSI), said: “The quality management system which has now been deployed by the PMO will give it the framework to deliver excellence, so I applaud the PMO for the leadership it has shown. This is the first project to come to fruition between the SC and the BSI, and this milestone should be viewed as a statement of intent that the PMO is committed to applying the very best practices and frameworks to allow consistency in quality. We are excited to be partnering with the SC on this journey, and look forward to future discussions around applying a similar approach to the rest of the SC, in a similar way to how we helped London and Beijing deliver excellence at the Olympic Games in 2012 and 2008.”
The ambassador also mentioned that there is a growing push in the UK to invest in Qatari businesses.  He commented: “The drive on this front has to come from the private sector – but with the full support and backing of the British Embassy – and particularly in those sectors where the UK has a lot of expertise, such as construction, design and project delivery.”