ISO Standards in Tenders

Contracting authorities use ISO certificates as objective proof that a bidder has an organised system: quality (ISO 9001), environmental protection (ISO 14001), occupational safety (ISO 45001), information security (ISO 27001) and other areas. Rather than each authority checking bidders themselves, they rely on the review carried out by an independent accredited certification body.

For bidders this means two things: without the required certificate, a bid often fails on formal requirements, and with an invalid one (expired, non-accredited, wrong scope) you risk rejection or a competitor's complaint.

The designation MEST EN ISO 9001 is not a different standard from ISO 9001 — MEST denotes Montenegro's national adoption, and EN the European adoption, of the same international standard. The substantive requirements are identical.

The years in the designations don't have to match: ISO 9001:2015 and MEST EN ISO 9001:2016 can represent the same standard — 2015 is the year of the international edition, and 2016 the year of national adoption or publication. The same logic applies to ISO 14001, ISO 45001, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO 22301, ISO/IEC 20000-1, ISO/IEC 27701, ISO/IEC 42001 and other standards.

In tenders it's therefore essential to require (and offer) the current version of the standard and a valid accredited certificate, rather than fixating on a difference in the national designation's year — this avoids confusion, rejected bids and complaints.

In addition: always check whether the certification body is accredited specifically for that standard and field (scope) of activity. A contracting authority can reject a certificate from a body without the appropriate accreditation, and the check is public — through accreditation-body registers.

Most of the confusion is caused by the national prefix in the designation: the same standard carries its own designation in every country, so a bidder from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina or Croatia brings a certificate that “doesn’t look the same” — even though it is the same standard. That is why we recommend that tender and public procurement documentation always states the international designation — ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO/IEC 27001 — because every bidder understands it, wherever they come from, and nobody has to prove that MEST, SRPS or BAS are “the same thing”. Official designations by national institute:

The designations are deliberately shown without the year of issue: the year in a national designation is the year of national adoption, not the year of the ISO edition, so it differs from country to country. MEST EN ISO 9001:2016, SRPS ISO 9001:2015 and BAS EN ISO 9001:2015 are one and the same standard — ISO 9001:2015. The same applies to ISO/IEC 27001:2022, which Montenegro adopted as MEST ISO/IEC 27001:2023. You can always check the exact designation and year of adoption in the national institute’s catalogue.

On each of our individual standard pages both designations are given — the international and the Montenegrin one — so you can quickly check which corresponds to which: overview of all standards.