Courtesy: ISO 29001oil and gas
The adoption of a quality management system is a strategic decision for an organization that can
help to improve its overall performance and provide a sound basis for sustainable development
initiatives.
The potential benefits to an organization of implementing a quality management system based on
this International Standard are:
a) the ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and applicable
statutory and regulatory requirements;
b) facilitating opportunities to enhance customer satisfaction;
c) addressing risks and opportunities associated with its context and objectives;
d) the ability to demonstrate conformity to specified quality management system requirements.
This International Standard can be used by internal and external parties.
It is not the intent of this International Standard to imply the need for:
— uniformity in the structure of different quality management systems;
— alignment of documentation to the clause structure of this International Standard;
— the use of the specific terminology of this International Standard within the organization.
The quality management system requirements specified in this International Standard are
complementary to requirements for products and services.
This International Standard employs the process approach, which incorporates the Plan-Do-CheckAct (PDCA) cycle and risk-based thinking.
The process approach enables an organization to plan its processes and their interactions.
The PDCA cycle enables an organization to ensure that its processes are adequately resourced and
managed, and that opportunities for improvement are determined and acted on.
Risk-based thinking enables an organization to determine the factors that could cause its processes
and its quality management system to deviate from the planned results, to put in place preventive
controls to minimize negative effects and to make maximum use of opportunities as they arise
Quality management principles
This International Standard is based on the quality management principles described in ISO 9000.
The descriptions include a statement of each principle, a rationale of why the principle is important
for the organization, some examples of benefits associated with the principle and examples of typical
actions to improve the organization’s performance when applying the principle.
The quality management principles are:
— customer focus;
— leadership;
— engagement of people;
— process approach;
— improvement;
— evidence-based decision making;
— relationship management.
This International Standard promotes the adoption of a process approach when developing,
implementing and improving the effectiveness of a quality management system, to enhance customer
satisfaction by meeting customer requirements. Specific requirements considered essential to the
adoption of a process approach are included in 4.4.
Understanding and managing interrelated processes as a system contributes to the organization’s
effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its intended results. This approach enables the organization
to control the interrelationships and interdependencies among the processes of the system, so that
the overall performance of the organization can be enhanced.
The process approach involves the systematic definition and management of processes, and their
interactions, so as to achieve the intended results in accordance with the quality policy and strategic
direction of the organization. Management of the processes and the system as a whole can be
achieved using the PDCA cycle (see 0.3.2) with an overall focus on risk-based thinking (see 0.3.3)
aimed at taking advantage of opportunities and preventing undesirable results.
The application of the process approach in a quality management system enables:
a) understanding and consistency in meeting requirements;
b) the consideration of processes in terms of added value;
c) the achievement of effective process performance;
d) improvement of processes based on evaluation of data and information
quality specification level
QSL
level defining the extent of control activities, typically including testing, inspection, verification and
validation, undertaken by the provider to demonstrate conformance with requirements based on the
determination of operational risk and/or obligations
Note 1 to entry: Similar product- or service-specific terms can be used in technical standards to establish the
extent of control activities for defined levels of product or service risk, e.g. quality specification level (QSL) in API
Spec 6D, product specification level (PSL) in API Spec 6A and API Spec 17D, and exposure level in ISO 19900.
Note 2 to entry: Product or service risk is related to criticality. In this context, ‘critical’ is defined as that deemed
by the organization, product or service specification, or customer as (i) mandatory, indispensable or essential,
(ii) needed for a stated purpose or task, and(iii) requiring specific action.
Competence
competence catalogue
hierarchical structured list of the competences required to perform a task
[SOURCE: ISO/TS 17969:2017, 3.3, modified – ‘any task’ has been changed to ‘a task’ and ‘competency’
and ‘competencies’ have been changed to ‘competence’ and ‘competences’.]
competence profile
skills and behaviour, each specified at a level of proficiency, required to perform a role or activity in line
with the associated risk or opportunity