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Obtaining B Corp and ISO certification for Stance Sets
At a glance
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Client: Stance Sets, based in Essex.
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Sector: Events, set build and staging
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The challenge: Achieve B Corp certification, and mature an ISO 9001 and 14001 system that had been built at certification and not yet caught up with how the company had grown.
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What we did: Led the B Corp submission, rewrote the management system around how the team delivers work, built the first full internal audit programme, then supported the company through its first annual surveillance audit.
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The result: Certified B Corp in October 2025, both ISO certificates held, surveillance audit passed with the auditor singling out the day-to-day operational processes as stronger than he expected.
The challenge: compliance slipping through the cracks
Stance Sets build sets and staging for event agencies and brands, out of a workshop in Essex. They have thirteen full timers plus many freelancers, with designers, a workshop team and project managers running installs around the country.
Rob and Matt, the two directors, brought Opsessed in to do one thing: get them through B Corp. They wanted it because it matched how they were already running the company as a value aligned business.
Alongside that sat the ISO work. Stance Sets held ISO 9001 and 14001, and the delivery behind those certificates was strong. What had not kept pace was the documentation. The management system had been written at the point of certification, in fairly generic terms, and the company had grown and changed a lot since. New people, new roles, a bigger workshop team, more complex jobs. The result was a system that described a company rather than describing this company.
With the first internal audit due and the first annual surveillance audit ahead of it, the directors wanted to go into both properly rather than scrape through. The commercial side mattered too. Stance Sets were bidding for work against much larger contractors, and they wanted credentials they could evidence in detail, quickly, whenever a client asked.
The approach:
B Corp came first. Building a score means putting the policies, the governance and the evidence trail in place that B Lab asks for. Much of the substance was already there in how Rob and Matt ran the business, so a good deal of the work was documenting and evidencing practice that existed. Certification came through in October 2025, earlier in the company's life than most businesses manage it.
The ISO work started with the people doing the jobs rather than with the existing documents. We sat with each team and wrote down how Stance Sets deliver: design and technical drawing, workshop production, on-site installation and de-rig, project management, then the support and management processes around them. Twelve processes in total. Each was rewritten to describe the way the team already worked, and the records and controls were built to match.
The test throughout was whether someone in the workshop would recognise their own job in the document. That is what turns a management system from something the business maintains into something the business uses.
What we built
- B Corp certification, and ongoing custodianship. The submission, the policy set and the evidence pack, then the year-one work: B Hive onboarding, brand book alignment, and sourcing decisions checked against what certification commits them to.
- An integrated management system. ISO 9001 and 14001 run as one IMS, with all twelve core, support and management processes rewritten around how Stance Sets deliver.
- A full internal audit programme. Two days on site auditing every process against the standard, interviewing the people doing the work, watching the activity and reviewing the records. Findings written up properly, root causes worked through, corrective actions tracked to closure.
- A first annual surveillance audit, passed. Including a full operational walkthrough of a completed job, from enquiry to final invoice and debrief.
- A management review that meets the standard. Run against the full agenda, minuted, with owners and actions. Now on a rhythm of one comprehensive annual review plus quarterly operational reviews.
- A formal supplier approval process. Vetting, a spend threshold, an approved list and periodic review, giving structure to relationships the team had built up over years of buying well.
- A handover. The system is being passed to the in-house operations manager, with mentoring alongside it, so Stance Sets own and run it themselves.
Kristian came in to get us through B Corp and stayed to help us build on how we run the company. We were already good at delivering the work. What we needed was a management system that reflected that, and an audit programme that stood up to scrutiny.
Our surveillance auditor told us he did not expect our processes to be that strong. Kristian is now training our own team to run it, which was always the plan."”
The results:
The surveillance audit was the test of all of it. The auditor said he had not expected the performance to be that strong, and singled out the day-to-day operational processes. Following a real job end to end, the paper trail held up: brief, workshop schedule, kickoff, CAD, client drawing approval, call sheets, purchasing, load list, install, disposal, final invoice, debrief.
That result says as much about the Stance Sets team as it does about the system. The quality was already in the work. The year was spent making the documentation, the audit evidence and the review rhythm match it.
Commercially, Stance Sets can now put B Corp, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 in front of a client or a tender and evidence every one of them in detail. They can turn a PQQ round quickly, because the policies behind it exist and are current. For a company of this size bidding against national contractors, that is a real advantage.
The last piece is ownership. The system is being handed to the operations manager with training and mentoring behind it, so the business runs its own compliance rather than depending on an outside consultant to hold it.
The wider scope:
The B Corp brief grew. Opsessed now works with Stance Sets on a fractional basis across three areas:
- People and HR. A mapped org chart with clear line management, job descriptions across the company, and rebuilt induction, probation and appraisal processes. Full-cycle hiring, an apprentice pathway with the local college, and an independent person the team can raise things with.
- Operations. One consistent project management process, mapped with the directors and now followed on every job by every project manager. A health and safety committee, and business continuity testing run as war games across the company.
- Strategy. Advisory work with the two directors on pipeline, commercial focus and where the business goes next.
