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Welcome to the Frequently Asked Questions page. Below, we have tried to answer the most common questions we are asked about quality assurance and our scheme. If you find that your question is not answered on this page, please e-mail us info@ciqa.eu or call us between 9am and 5.30pm on 01932 231361. Why do I need Quality Assurance? More and more clients today require ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001:2004 as a pre-requisite to tender for major contracts. In the public sector, many government departments will only use a company which has UKAS accredited certification to ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001:2004. Quality Assurance will enhance your prospects of tendering and winning those once out of reach contracts. It will also improve the efficiency of your business. Why is UKAS accredited certification so important? UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) is the only national accreditation body recognised by the Government to assess, against international standards, organisations that provide certification, testing, inspection and calibration services. Accreditation by UKAS demonstrates the competence and impartiality of these assessors. Why does the name of the Standard keep changing? ISO 9001:2000 is part of the ISO 9000 series of Standards relating to Quality Assurance. ISO 14001:2004 is part of the ISO 14000 series of Standards relating to Environmental Management. The name changes whenever the International Standard for Organization (the ruling body) updates a current Standard. Our practice already has our own procedures and forms. Do we have to re-write these or even throw them out? Absolutely not. All your own procedures and forms can easily be integrated into our system with the minimum of work. You can still continue to use both your procedures and forms; they just need to be listed in two appendices at the back of your Quality Manual. Your procedures are then known as ‘local procedures’ and are totally controlled by you, including updating and auditing. Any forms you use, whether they are your or ours (we include in our scheme forms that we have found to be useful to other companies over the years which you can use if you wish) are also controlled by you. It is not our intention to come into your office and make you throw away piles of stationery and years of expertise. How long will it take to achieve certification? This will depend on how big your company is and how much time is available to set the scheme up. We usually anticipate requesting an assessment visit from EQA within 12 months from joining the scheme. In the initial stages the greater amount of time that can be set aside to implement the scheme the better. Once certified, the scheme should be low maintenance and will only require greater input when auditing takes place (usually every six months) and when the annual review takes place. When an external visit from either EQA or CIQA is due, we will contact you and arrange a mutually convenient date. You will never receive a surprise visit. Tell me more about audits. All procedures require auditing on a regular basis. We usually recommend six monthly until you are completely confident with the system and it is working well for you. However many of our members find it is easier to set up a programme of audits checking one set of procedures every two months). Auditing ensures that procedures are still being followed and that everything is running smoothly. Audits will throw up areas that require improvement such as the drawings or documents being checked by a third party before issue.
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