Fiona Parker
BSI-qualified Lead Auditor in ISO 9001. I lead quality management at Iseo Blue.
I have been on both sides of the audit table
Most people who audit quality management systems have only ever assessed other people’s. I spent six years running one. Six years of day-to-day activities, internal audits, and external audits. So, I know what it’s like to be running a QMS and what it’s like walking into a room to be audited.
I was responsible for the integrated management system at a UK critical power systems contractor, working across the UK, Central Europe and Scandinavia on generator and UPS solutions for commercial, industrial and mission-critical environments. We held ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, certified by the British Assessment Bureau. I built the system, took it through initial certification, and then through recertification: four years of certification and surveillance audits in total.
Power systems for mission-critical sites are not a place for a management system that exists only on paper.
Before quality: twenty years of assessing how organisations actually work
I did not arrive at auditing from nowhere.
I spent seven years at Pink Elephant as an ITIL consultant and trainer, benchmarking and maturity-assessing service management processes for organisations including AXA Sun Life, Microsoft and Barclaycard, then building improvement plans off the back of those assessments. Assessing an organisation against a framework, gathering evidence, and telling people honestly where the gaps are: that is the same discipline I apply to ISO 9001 today.
From there I moved into running IT services rather than advising on them. At CfBT Education Services I managed service desk and deskside teams across multiple contracts. Then at McLaren I spent nearly seven years, first as Head of IT Support Services, managing more than forty staff across three teams including trackside IT, through the centralisation of IT across five separate McLaren businesses, and later as IT Finance Manager, where I built the contract management process and led the IT workstream of an SAP rollout.
Two things from that period matter to the work I do now. The first is that centralising IT across five businesses is a lesson in what happens at the handover points between teams, which is where I still find most of what is worth finding in an audit. The second is that presenting at board level teaches you to explain why a process matters in terms the business actually cares about, rather than in terms of the standard.
Qualifications
Here’s a list of my key achievements.
- BSI-qualified Lead Auditor, ISO 9001 (2026)
- Six years running a certified integrated ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 management system, four of them under certification
- Seven years as an ITIL consultant and trainer, assessing and improving service management processes
- BA (Hons)
How I work
I first worked with Iseo Blue back in 2019, on IT processes and documentation. I rejoined in 2026 to lead the quality practice, and I brought with me a fairly strong view about what quality management systems should look like in a small business.
Most SMEs are already doing the right things. They review what customers ask for, they check work before it goes out, they deal with problems when they arise. What they usually lack is not process, it is evidence that the process happened consistently. So my instinct is almost always to look at what already exists before creating anything new. Emails, project records, meeting notes and job files are usually perfectly good evidence, and a system built on records you already generate is one you will still be running in three years.
The systems that fail are the ones that were built for the auditor rather than for the business. I have seen what an unloved management system costs, in wasted effort and in the quiet resentment of everyone expected to maintain it. Iseo Blue calls the alternative Minimal Viable Compliance, and I think it is the right instinct: build the leanest system that genuinely satisfies the standard, and add maturity later if the business needs it.
Outside work
I practise yoga and Pilates, I watch far more Formula 1 than is strictly reasonable given how many years I spent working in it, and most of my remaining time belongs to my two boys.
What I do at Iseo Blue
I lead our ISO 9001 practice. That means independent internal audits for businesses that need an impartial pair of eyes before certification or surveillance, and coaching for businesses building a quality management system from scratch or rescuing one that nobody uses.
Learn about our ISO 9001 coaching and internal audits