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A few years ago, I was part of a team that won a construction-focused hackathon.

Our winning application was a SaaS service that analyses any uploaded document (for example a construction specification) and highlights if any references to quality management standards in the document are incomplete, ambiguous, or if the standard cited is out of date.

One key element of this application is a module that identifies references to quality management standards in documents.

We used this module to analyse public procurement notices over a nine-year period to see which quality management standards are most often cited.

Table 1 shows the ranking of the top 30 (out of more than 1000) standards in all OJEU contract notices (includes UK) for each year.

It’s interesting to see how some standards, such as DIN 276, DIN 14530, and ISO 9001 are very stable in their ranking.

Others, such as DIN 18040 and DIN EN 81 have grown in importance over the years.

Table 1: Quality Management Standards in OJEU notices in EU + UK

Looking only at public contract notices from the UK, the picture is a more scattered.

Table 2 shows the ranking of the top 30 standards in UK only public procurement notices.

In UK public procurement notices the mentions of quality management standards fluctuate significantly from year to year.

Although ISO 9001 is consistently ranked number 1, notice how some standards, for example BS 4971, only features in certain years.

Table 2: Quality Management Standards in UK Public Procurement Notices

Looking at individual countries across EU, it is clear that while the aggregated picture is dominated by DIN standards, there are substantial variations from country to country.

Are you looking to understand which quality management standards that are important or emerging in different countries or regions? If so, get in touch and learn how we can help.

Follow Tenderlake on LinkedIn for concise insights on public-sector tenders and emerging procurement signals.