While there is nothing to stop an organisation running two, three or even four separate systems to document its approach to various standards, imagine the amount of paperwork and potential confusion this can and will cause.
I have worked with companies that have two and even three separate system and in all cases the result of this approach has been to ensure that the systems have not been followed and that the documentation is there for the ‘Assessors’ benefit and not the organisation’s.
No company would start out with this intent, most start with ISO9001 and somehow manage to separate this from the reality of the mechanisms they use daily to run the business and then find themselves with dusty folders that only Assessors see. To comply with legal obligations they have a system of sorts for managing health and safety (in a lot of cases the reality is that it is just a tired policy document) and it never occurs to them to use one to manage the other. Time marches on and someone mentions environmental management and before you know it there’s a third system in place as ineffective as the first two.
Experience in reviewing and remodelling these systems into effective management tools is invaluable to the organisations that have realised that just because their systems have evolved this way there’s no reason not to intervene and start to create instead. I provide that experience.