An honest account of who we are.
We are a small consultancy. We help growing businesses build and certify the ISO management systems they need — clearly scoped, plainly explained, and owned by their team by the time we leave.
Why Aivantis exists.
Small and medium businesses are often the ones most likely to encounter an ISO requirement for the first time — in a customer contract, a funding round, or a new tender. They need a consultancy that understands their team size, their budget, and the pressure they're under to move quickly.
Aivantis was set up to serve that client: a 20-to-150 person company whose founder or ops lead has just been told they need a certificate, often against a deadline set by a customer or investor. We are structured around their team size, their scope, and their tolerance for consultant-speak.
Founded by an IRCA-certified Lead Auditor.
The founder is an IRCA-certified Lead Auditor who has delivered hundreds of audits across multiple sectors, with many years' experience working as a lead auditor for a UKAS-accredited certification body. Their background is in the British Army, working on cryptographic systems and secure communications. Aivantis is being built alongside full-time employment, bringing that audit-side experience — knowing what an auditor is actually looking for — to SMEs going through certification for the first time.
A few things we think are worth saying.
We don't push a retainer you don't need.
Most businesses can maintain the system themselves after certification, and we'll tell you if that's the case. If you'd rather have ongoing support — for surveillance audits, recertification, or ad hoc queries — a retainer is available, but it's never assumed as part of the engagement.
We're independent of certification bodies.
We don't have referral arrangements with certification bodies and don't recommend one over another for commercial reasons. We'll tell you which bodies are well-regarded for your sector and let you decide.
We're upfront about how extra time is billed.
Our engagements are fixed-scope, so you know what you're getting before you commit. Ad hoc meetings or advice outside that scope are typically billed at a day rate if you don't have a retainer in place; retainer clients have this handled differently. If the scope changes substantially, we'll tell you before we start the additional work.
We build what the standard requires — and stop there.
More documentation and more procedures don't make a system stronger. We scope each build to what the standard requires and what your team can realistically maintain — that's usually the most durable outcome, not the most elaborate one.