Independent entity to monitor EU ROs

The organisation, to be known as the ‘Entity for the Quality Assessment and Certification of Organisations Recognised by the European Union’ (QACE), has been established in England and will maintain headquarters in London. It has elected a five-member board responsible for the oversight of its activities. The five directors – Klaus Grensemann, Hiroshi Iwamoto, Victor M. Santos-Pedro, Dean Tseretopoulos and Francis Vallat – have been chosen for their collective maritime experience, reputation, independence from the classification societies and impartiality. The QACE organisation will maintain an administrative staff based at its new headquarters.

The establishment of QACE was welcomed by the ROs as quality is a never-ending challenge of continual improvement. When properly implemented and administered, quality-based audits are an extremely valuable tool in helping the audited organisation to identify areas in which it can further improve its services and administration. In this instance, the establishment of QACE can be expected to lead to improvements in the delivery of classification services over time to the benefit of the member societies’ clients and, most importantly, to further improvements in maritime safety.

QACE has been established in accordance with Article 11 of the EU Regulation (EC) 391/2009. In fulfilling the purposes set out in Article 11 and promoting safety at sea and the protection of the marine environment it will undertake the following tasks:

* frequent and regular assessment of the quality management systems of the EU Recognised Organisations, in accordance with the ISO 9001 quality standard criteria;

* certification of the quality management systems of EU Recognised Organisations, including those organisations for which recognition has been requested in accordance with Article 3 of the Regulation;

* issue interpretations of internationally recognised quality management standards that take account of the specific features of the nature and obligations of Recognised Organisations; and

* adopt individual and collective recommendations for the improvement of EU Recognised Organisations’ processes and internal-control mechanisms.