As you may know, Additive Manufacturing Solutions had been nominated for two awards at the Be Inspired Business Awards (BIBAs), for Micro Business of the Year and Innovative Business of the Year.

It comes with great pride and surprise to announce that we can confirm that we have won commendation in Innovative Business of the Year and winner of Micro Business of the Year.

The team would like to share some of their thoughts.

COO, Katie, who was up on stage to collect the award on behalf of Additive Manufacturing Solutions. Katie states that “It’s about the recognition. We believe in what we do, but sometimes you question wether you’re making the right choices, but the external recognition that we have from others that have come in and judged what we do have said ‘you are doing a fantastic job’ with this award. I want everyone to know that if we can do it, anybody can do it.”

When asked how she felt about the awards, “So so proud. It’s a reflection of all of the thinking outside of the box that Robert does.”

Joe, Systems Engineer for AMS was at the awards show on Friday, stated that he was “made to feel more passionate about his job, and that what we are doing is going in the right direction.”

Davey, another one of our cohorts at the awards evening, was “blown away. I honestly never actually thought we’d get anything, never mind winning an award and being runner up in another. Incredible!”

Owner and CEO, Robert Higham told me that this award is meaningful in a way beyond words. “When you create a business from scratch, you have immense bias towards what you think you’re doing. You follow gut, you follow instinct, and you take it personally. It’s an emotional thing. External validation with congratulations that gets to the point of celebration is beyond comprehension as to how much that means to us.”

On behalf of AMS, we would like to thank North and Western Lancashire Chamber of Commerce and the BIBAs for an incredible awards show.

If you or your business would be interested in more details for next years BIBAs, see this link for more information.

We are delighted to announce that AMS has been awarded the highest level of Cyber Essentials, Cyber Essentials Plus certification, with a huge thank you to local Cyber Security Specialists, Predatech.

What is Cyber Essentials Plus?

Our certification now means that we can show our customers, domestically and international, that we are fully committed on data security. We know how important data security is, especially with our line of work being very much data focused.

Cyber Essentials is a government funded scheme that can provide help and understanding for businesses into cyber attacks and how to best equip yourselves with the tools to mitigate them.

Cyber Essentials is a self-assessed review which asks the user to perform as a self-auditor for the company, whereas Cyber Essentials Plus is much more hands on approach from a third party who perform the checks following the initial Cyber Essentials work, and into more detail and checks on machines and equipment used within the business.

Why Cyber Essentials Plus?

• Provide further security assurances to customers and employees.
• Become more aware of potential threats to loss of data and security availability.
• Further government contracts, such as the MOD, require Cyber Essentials certification, Cyber Essentials Plus is the more advanced version of this.

Okay, I’m interested in getting certified, where do I start?

It’s simple, first I’d recommend going to the National Cyber Security Centre website. and having a general read through the documentation and pages. If you’re interested in getting Cyber Essentials Plus certification, we cannot recommend Predatech enough. The assessment process was incredibly flexible to our timeframes, easy to understand (thanks to the staff at Predatech!), and we even saved a bit of money on some other companies who had offered their services to us.