MechChem Africa talks to Oliver Naidoo, managing director of JC Auditors, and Sean Blake, the company’s new ISO 3834 specialist, about the cost and convenience advantages of integrating multiple ISO accreditations so as to best ensure product quality, safety, process excellence as well as compliance with the environmental, social and governance (ESG) norms that are becoming an essential part of long term business success.
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“I have been in the compliance space for 20 years and I ended up as the group compliance manager with a German multinational. But it was the ceiling for me in that company, so in 2001 I took a leap of faith and decided to go out on my own as a consultant,” begins Oliver Naidoo, the current MD of JC Auditors.
“Then in 2003, I saw the opportunity to launch a certification body that would be different. Most of the Certification and Verifications companies that I worked with are from Europe and, as a South African, I wanted to be an enabler of South African industry, to partner with industry and to help it become safer, more compliant, more professional and more competitive,” he tells MechChem Africa.
So Naidoo formally registered JC Auditors in 2008, starting off as road transport specialist. Since then, the entity has steadily grown: “It started with a research project set up by National Government and the then National Productivity Institute (NPI) to look at ways to minimise the damage caused by trucks on our roads, along with improving road safety. We ended up becoming a strong compliance brand in the logistics and transport industries of South Africa,” he says.
“Then, about five years ago, we began to look at engineering, manufacturing, construction and warehousing. We added medical devices about two years ago and, more recently, I met Sean Blake and we saw an opportunity to go into the fabrication sector, primarily driven by Sean’s expertise and understanding of welding and the fabrication markets,” Oliver Naidoo relates.
“Now, for any fabrication company, we are able to offer integrated compliance certifications for all of the key ISO standards that have become minimum requirements for doing work for responsibly minded companies in South Africa and anywhere else in the world: ISO 9001 for Quality Management; IS0 14001 for Environmental Management; ISO 45001 for Occupational Health and Safety; and we also offer ISO 13485 for medical devices. With Sean on board, we can now add, ISO 3834 for Weld Quality Requirements.
“Our current team includes 18 auditors that can cover all nine provinces of South Africa and we also have clients in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Swaziland,” adds Naidoo.
The Integrated certifications approach
Companies that provide critical services, manufactured goods or fabricated components all need a sound quality management system that allows them to deliver quality services or quality products. This is why ISO 9001 has become so widespread. “Also, though, there is a huge amount of pressure for companies to showcase their ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) credentials – commitment to the environment, to sustainable development, the wellbeing of their employees and the communities they come from. So ISO 9001 is routinely coupled with ISO 14001 and ISO 45001.
“What we at JC Auditors strive to offer is a one-stop-shop. Local companies can appoint us for audit accreditations that embraced a cluster of ISO Standards at the same time, which comes with the direct cost benefit of having a single audit for multiple certifications. Companies also benefit because employees are not having to attend two, three or four audits instead of the one simultaneous audit that we offer to assess compliance to all of the ISO standards,” notes Oliver Naidoo, adding that all JC Auditors certifications are internationally recognised because the company is a signatory to the Multinational Recognition Arrangement (MLA) of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), the global association for accreditation bodies.
Strengthening the fabrication sector
“From a fabrication quality point of view, there is a lot of synergy between ISO 9001 and ISO 3834, and now that Sean is onboard, we can easily couple these two certifications together as well,” continues Naidoo. “Sean can take care of both 9001 and 3834 simultaneously.
And if any other accreditations are needed, then we would send in an audit team with the required competence so all the audit work can be competed concurrently, for one processing fee. This results in about 30 to 40% savings for the client compared to the cost of separate audits for each ISO standard,” he adds.
Sean Blake continues: “The quality management system requirements embedded in ISO 9001 are not specific at all. This is where ISO 3834 steps in; it clearly identifies the specific requirements for welding quality that fabricators need to comply with. So by design, ISO 9001 and ISO 3834 are best applied together, with ISO 3834 ensuring compliance with the specific welding processes and procedures required by fabricators and ISO 9001 being used as the system for managing and applying ISO 3834,” says Blake, adding that, while it is not a requirement in either of these ISO Standards to have both certifications, it makes total sense to use them together.
“I like to think of ISO 3834 as a welding process control system, which is essential for anyone fabricating safe structures, pressure vessels, vehicles or plant equipment. It is not a quality management system, though, so it is best applied alongside ISO 9001,” Blake elaborates.
While ISO 3834 recommends that parts of ISO 9001 be implemented alongside the weld quality management system, SANS 347, the South African Pressure Equipment Regulation (PER), takes this a step further and makes all the elements of ISO 9001 embedded in ISO 3834 mandatory.
Anyone manufacturing pressure equipment in South Africa must operate key elements of ISO 9001, so it makes much more sense to be certificated to both of these compliance systems,” he says, adding the suggestion that the required ISO 9001 elements are seldom included in ISO 3834 checklists, so many of those certified to ISO 3834 may not actually be fully compliant with the PER.
“What is really critical is that any compliance auditor is an industry expert with a unique understanding of the industry dynamics and exactly how an ISO standard should be applied to help each company succeed,” continues Naidoo. “There are many qualified ISO auditors who don't have exposure to the specific industry and how to apply the requirements in certain niche markets.
“This is where we believe the expertise of all of our auditors comes in. Like Sean, they can all offer invaluable advice on how best to use ISO compliance requirements as a value-add to their engineering offerings. Our customers appreciate that compliance is not just about ticking boxes. It enables the real risks in projects to be identified: risks that can hurt a business if not taken into account and mitigated.
“Along with our compliance and verification services, we add value to our client’s businesses so they become more sustainable, more competitive, more respected, more environmentally friendly and socially responsible – making our partners, our communities and our world safer, better and stronger over the long term,” Oliver Naidoo concludes.
