Quest

A commitment to continuous improvement:

Sports Sites are committed to enhancing service delivery through quality awards. Quest is the industry recognised quality management award for Sports Centres in the UK.  The award focuses on over 150 Management issues, relating to Facility Operations, Customer Relation, Staffing and Strategic Development & Review.

The format for the award includes self assessment, followed by a robust action plan leading to a mystery shopper visit followed by a detailed 2 day on site assessment.

Currently Arrow Vale Sports Centre & Kingsley Sports Centre have achieved the award, and the other Sports sites are following the good practice criteria through Service Improvement Strategy

More about Quest

How does Quest work?

Quest is the UK Quality Scheme for Sport and Leisure.

Quest defines industry standards and good practice and encourages their application and development in a customer-focused management framework. Quest is recommended by the British Quality Foundation for Self Assessment in Sport and Leisure Operations.

There are 2 distinct categories for Quest:

• Quest Facility Management - aimed at Sports and Leisure Facilities, in the commercial, voluntary and public sectors
• Quest Sports Development - aimed at Sports Development Units in Local Authorities, Governing Bodies and Voluntary Organisations.

Each of the areas identified above has both a Self-Assessment improvement programme, and the opportunity for an independent External Assessment.

There are 3 main stages to achieving Quest:

1. Self-Assessment

Organisations are able to assess their operation in comparison to industry standards and best practice information, provided in the Quest Manager's Guidance Pack. It enables Managers and their teams to:

• make informed judgements about how they are performing against recognised industry standards
• identify their strengths
• identify their areas for improvement
• draw up their own plans of action to raise standards of service delivery to customers.

The Scheme encourages Managers and their teams to consider their operation from the customer's point of view, asking key questions such as: "If it does not benefit the customer - why are we doing it?"

2 External Validation

There is also the opportunity to receive an objective External Assessment, undertaken by trained Assessors from the industry. The Assessment will check the operation against industry standards, and provide a percentage score.

Quest operates a grading system based upon the scores

• registered - above 60%
• highly commended - 75% to 84%
• excellent - 85% and above

For facility management, the external validation also incorporates a mystery visit.

3 Ongoing Maintenance

Assessment frequency is based on a two-year cycle with two monitoring visits to maintain registration. This frequency will ensure that quality of service delivery is maintained in line with the Quest standards. Through the updating of standards continual improvement is promoted.

Within this process the confidentiality required by Organisations and individual Centres is ensured.