An engineering services firm decides to have its project management capability assessed. The stated purpose is continuous improvement. The actual trigger is a tender from a major client asking for evidence of assessed capability, and the real deadline is the bid submission date. Nothing improper has happened. The firm does want to improve, and the client’s request is reasonable. But the two purposes make different demands, and where they conflict, the deadline wins.
An assessment run for a tender will be scoped to what can be evidenced, timed to the submission and reported in a form a client can read. An assessment run for improvement would be scoped to where the firm suspects it is weakest, timed to its improvement cycle and reported in a form that is uncomfortable. The first produces a rating or certificate. The second produces a work programme. Very few businesses get both from one exercise, and almost none decide in advance which one they are buying.
This article is about the many kinds of assessment small businesses encounter: quality, safety and environmental certifications, industry accreditations, supplier prequalification, customer audits and capability or maturity ratings. It explains why the audience for an assessment shapes everything about it, how to choose the right approach for each purpose and why improvement usually needs its own budget and owner.
Why businesses seek assessments
Research on project management maturity assessment by Rad and Levin, published in the 2006 AACE International Transactions, set out frankly why organisations seek ratings. Their list includes a genuine internal desire to improve; reaction to a past failure or a current crisis; a client wanting assurance about a contractor, or a way to screen several prospective contractors; competitive pressure after a rival announces a rating; due diligence in mergers; evaluating partners and subcontractors; entering new lines of business; and using a rating as a credential to stand out in a pool of bidders.
Read as an owner, roughly half of those motivations have an external audience: the assessment is done so that a result can be shown to someone else. The authors also observed that motivation driven by a crisis tends to fade once the crisis passes, and warned that assessments should not become an end in themselves.
Common misreadings
- The purposes are compatible. They overlap but are not the same. An improvement assessment is most valuable where it is least flattering, because that is where the work is. A credential is most valuable where it is defensible, because that is what survives scrutiny. Point one exercise at both and the scope drifts, quietly and reasonably, towards what can be evidenced.
- An external audience makes the exercise dishonest. It does not. Earning a certification or rating that customers require is a legitimate commercial activity. The mistake is calling it improvement, because then the improvement work is recorded as done when it was never commissioned.
- A rising rating means the business improved. A rating can rise because practice changed, because documentation improved, because a different assessor was used, or because the scope was drawn around the stronger parts of the business. Only the first is improvement.
- Energy from a crisis will last. An assessment commissioned after a failure carries momentum for a few months. An improvement programme planned to run for eighteen months will mostly be abandoned as attention moves on.
Three audiences, three approaches
| Audience | What it needs | Who should own it | How to budget it |
|---|---|---|---|
| External: customers, tender panels, buyers, partners | A defensible, comparable, evidenced statement at a point in time | Whoever runs bids, compliance or administration | As a cost of winning work |
| Internal improvement | A diagnosis of real weaknesses and a prioritised plan | The people who will make the changes | As an investment, with expected benefits |
| Internal argument: funding, a dispute, a restructure | Evidence for a decision already in play | The decision-maker, openly | As part of the decision |
Two consequences follow:
- If the audience is external, do not expect improvement as a by-product. Budget and own the improvement work separately, or it will not happen.
- If the audience is internal, avoid a single headline number. A single score invites comparison, comparison invites credential use, and the credential use will take the exercise over.
The third audience is legitimate but rarely admitted. An assessment commissioned to win an internal argument will be recognised as such by the teams being assessed, and their cooperation will reflect it. Being open about the purpose is the cheapest way to keep the evidence honest.
Read the scale before scoring against it
Many maturity models and assessment frameworks describe levels, from basic to advanced. Before scoring against one, read the level definitions and ask whether the sequence fits your business. Some example models place practices that most businesses adopt early, such as setting up a central project support function, near the top of the scale. Others describe a middle level where practice becomes informal because it has become habit, which suggests heavy formality is not the goal. A scale adopted without this check produces a number nobody can explain.
Similarly, certification standards set requirements, but businesses can meet them in many ways. Understand what the standard actually requires before building a system around it, so the system fits how the business works rather than a template.
Credentials become entry tickets
A credential that few competitors hold can help a business stand out. Once most serious competitors hold it, it stops differentiating and becomes an entry requirement. Maintaining it then becomes a cost of doing business rather than a source of advantage. Both positions are legitimate, as long as the business knows which one it is in. Pursuing a credential early may be an investment. Pursuing it late may simply be the price of staying on tender lists.
Design for the half-life of a crisis
If an assessment follows a failure, design the improvement work to deliver its most valuable changes within about two quarters. Sequence the work by what will still command attention once the memory of the failure fades, rather than by neat logical order. Front-load the two or three changes that matter most and treat everything else as conditional on progress. This is unglamorous, and it is often the difference between an assessment that changes something and one that produces a report.
Prequalification and customer audits
Not every assessment is chosen by the business. Larger customers, government panels and principal contractors often require suppliers to complete prequalification questionnaires or host audits covering quality, safety, environmental management, insurance and financial standing. These are external-audience exercises by definition, and they can consume significant time if each is answered from scratch.
A practical approach is to keep a small, current evidence pack: policies, certificates, insurance documents, key procedures, safety statistics, example inspection records and references. Update it on a schedule rather than when a tender arrives. Each new questionnaire then becomes mostly a matter of selecting and adapting existing evidence. Treat any gaps the questionnaires reveal as inputs to the improvement track, not as problems to be papered over for the submission.
Keep a certified system useful
A certified management system can drift into a parallel world of documents that exist mainly for the annual audit. Signs include procedures nobody follows, records completed after the event and staff who see the system as the office manager’s job. Keep it useful by writing procedures from how work is actually done, removing documents that add nothing, linking system records to real management decisions and involving the people who do the work in internal audits. A system that helps people do their jobs is easier to maintain and stands up better to an external auditor’s questions.
Five steps before commissioning an assessment
- Name the audience in one sentence: we are doing this so that [who] can [do what]. If the sentence names more than one audience, split the exercise or choose.
- Match the approach to the audience: evidenced and comparable for external audiences; targeted and candid for improvement; openly stated for internal arguments.
- Decide what result would change a decision. For an improvement assessment, name the finding that would cause you to move money or people. If no finding would, the exercise is documentation and should be budgeted that way.
- Read the scale or standard and check it fits your business before scoring against it.
- If a crisis triggered it, plan for two quarters: the few changes that must outlast the urgency come first.
A supporting rule: if the audience is external, commission and fund the improvement work separately. The two exercises can share evidence. They should not share a scope, a timetable or a report.
A worked example
This is an illustration. An 18-person engineering and fabrication business learns that a major client will require a certified quality management system from its suppliers within six months. The owner is tempted to treat certification as the business’s improvement programme for the year.
Instead, the owner runs two tracks.
Track A, the credential, is owned by the office manager, with help from an external consultant. Its purpose is to achieve certification in time for the client’s requirement, with a system that genuinely reflects how the business works and does not add unnecessary paperwork. It is budgeted as a cost of keeping the client, about $18,000 including consulting and certification audit fees in this illustration. The owner checks that the certification body is appropriately accredited.
Track B, improvement, is owned by the operations manager. It begins with a candid diagnosis of the three weaknesses the team already suspects: drawing revision control, first-off inspection on new jobs and slow closure of customer complaints. There is no overall score. Each weakness gets an owner, a two-quarter plan and a measure, such as the number of jobs made to an outdated drawing revision.
The two tracks share evidence. The revision control improvements, for example, also support certification. But they have separate owners, budgets and reports.
After six months, certification is achieved. Separately, jobs made to outdated drawings fall from several a quarter to one, and customer complaints are closed in about half the time. Had the business merged the tracks, the certification deadline would likely have absorbed all the effort, and the three weaknesses would still be waiting.
How this applies to a small Australian business
Small businesses face assessments regularly: quality, safety and environmental certifications, industry accreditations, prequalification for tenders and government panels, and customer audits. Practical steps:
- Name the audience for every assessment before starting.
- Treat credentials as a cost of winning work, and budget them that way.
- Run improvement separately, with its own owner and plan.
- Build systems that fit how you work, rather than copying templates.
- Check that certification bodies are appropriately accredited, for example through the Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand.
- Check exactly what tenders and customers require, rather than assuming a particular certification is needed.
- Plan improvement after a crisis to deliver its main changes within two quarters.
The articles on standardising the routine and quality starts before the specification cover related ideas.
Signals worth watching
- Assessments that always finish just before major tenders.
- Improvement programmes that stall after about two quarters.
- Ratings that rise while practice stays the same.
- Assessment scope narrowing during the exercise.
- Nobody able to explain what the target level requires.
- Assessments commissioned shortly after a competitor’s announcement.
Common mistakes
- Running one exercise for two audiences.
- Calling a credential an improvement programme.
- Producing a single score for an internal diagnosis.
- Scoring against a scale nobody has read.
- Building heavy systems from templates that do not fit the business.
- Planning long improvement programmes after a crisis without front-loading the key changes.
Frequently asked questions
Is certification worth it for a small business? It depends on your customers and markets. If customers or tenders require it, it is a cost of winning that work. If they do not, consider whether the effort would be better spent on targeted improvement.
Can certification and improvement support each other? Yes, if the system is designed to fit the business. Shared evidence is fine. The risk is letting the certification deadline set the improvement agenda.
Should we use a consultant? A consultant can speed up certification and bring experience. Make sure the resulting system reflects how your business actually works, and that someone inside the business owns and understands it.
How do we keep improvement going after the crisis fades? Front-load the most important changes, give each an owner and a measure, and review progress at regular management meetings.
Questions to ask
- Who reads the result of our last assessment, and what did they do with it?
- What finding would have caused us to move money or people?
- Are we running one exercise for two audiences, and which is winning?
- Has anyone read the definitions or requirements we are assessed against?
- Of the improvement actions from our last assessment, how many are complete?
- If every competitor holds this credential, what are we buying?
Bringing it together
Assessments are useful tools that are often pointed at the wrong target, not through cynicism but because two legitimate purposes are allowed to share one exercise, and the one with the deadline wins. Name the audience before you start. Treat credentials as a cost of winning work, and fund and own improvement separately. Read the scale, avoid single scores for internal diagnosis, and design post-crisis improvement for a short window of attention. An assessment is a way of knowing where you stand. Once the rating becomes the objective, the business is managing its score rather than its capability.
Source: KEVOS notes, drawing on F. Rad and G. Levin, writing on project management maturity assessment in the 2006 AACE International Transactions. Examples and figures in this article are illustrations, not quotes.
