TAMAÑO SECTOR RANGO DE NUMERO DE TRABAJADORES VENTAS ANUALES (MDP) RANGO DE MONTO DE COMBINADO * TOPE MAXIMO

The basic Quality Assurance requirements that regulate the activities of offshore operators and contractors at the Norwegian continental shelf have been laid down in the following documents:

• ISO 9001:1994 Quality Systems. Model for quality assurance in design, development,

production, installation and servicing.

• The Petroleum Act and corresponding regulations, particularly The Norwegian Petroleum

164Quality assurance

activities on the Norwegian Continental Shelf with comments (“The Internal Control

Regulation”)

In addition, several guides are in frequent use. These are not regulatory documents, but offer guidelines. Particular attention should be drawn to the following:

• ISO 9004–1:1994 Quality management and quality system elements. Part 1: Guidelines. • ISO 9000–3:1992 Quality management and quality assurance standards. Part 3: Guidelines

for the application of ISO 9001 to the development, supply and maintenance of software.

• ISO 10011:1992 Guidelines for auditing quality systems. Parts 1, 2 and 3.

• ISO 9004–4:1995 Quality management and quality system elements. Part 4: Guidelines for

quality improvement.

Note that “The ISO 9000-family” is being revised at present. The target dates for publishing the revised standards are year 2000–2001. However, there is no reason to assume that the actual quality assurance requirements in the revised standards will be significantly changed.

6.2.2 The three basic principles of Quality Assurance

In view of the large number of documents that exist when it comes to Quality Management (QM) and Quality Assurance (QA), it is important to keep in mind the following three simple and basic QA principles:

• Prevent • Detect • Correct

These principles in fact form the three-pronged basic strategy of all commonly used QA standards and guidelines to day. Table 6.1 gives a broad outline of how the most usual Quality Assurance requirements can be grouped accordingly.

Each element is described in more detail below.

Quality assurance 165

(a) Prevent

In modern Quality Assurance, the main consideration is to prevent defects and non- conformities from occurring in the first place. This is because it would always be profitable to do things “right the first time”, as opposed to correcting mistakes and nonconformities later on. In addition, prevention increases the chances of the final product being correct, since there is always a risk that inherent defects and nonconformities will not be detected at all, or not until it is too late. Note that the term “product” may include service, hardware, processed materials, software or a combination thereof (ISO 8402). In this chapter, “product” also includes intermediate results of the engineering, design and construction process, i.e. calculations, drawings, specifications and other documents.

The most important preventive activity during engineering and design, in addition to good organizing and planning, is to make sure that the key personnel working on the project have sufficient and suitable competence (knowledge and experience).

(b) Detect

In general, it should be appreciated that modern technology and the interaction between technology and man, is not well enough developed to prevent all defects and nonconformities from occurring. Man is often considered to be the weakest joint in the chain. This goes for many products and businesses. It is therefore important to realise that defects and nonconformities certainly will occur from time to time, almost regardless of how much effort is put into preventing them.1 _{Efficient checks, inspections, audits and reviews must therefore be organized to ensure}

that the nonconformities are discovered and as quickly as possible, before they lead to serious consequences in terms of quality or safety problems, or financial losses.

During engineering, design and dimensioning, such checks should be carried out at different times and by means of various techniques. As mentioned above, the checks would have two objectives. One is to verify the processes, i.e. that the quality control and quality assurance systems are effectively planned and implemented. To this end Quality (System) Audits should be carried out. The other objective is to check the output, i.e. the results of the different activities during engineering, design and dimensioning. To this end Self-Checks, Discipline Checks (DC), Inter Discipline Checks (IDC) and Third Party Verifications are vital.

(c) Correct

As soon as a nonconformity has been detected, it must be assessed and a decision about how it should be treated further must be made. It is important that the decision is made at the right level in the organization. “Right level” here usually means the lowest level that has a complete view of the consequences of the decision. Usually, the decision concerning nonconformity in the engineering and design phase will be to correct or revise the relevant documents, calculations, etc. to satisfy the requirements. However, sometimes it may be relevant to apply for a deviation permit, with or without rework. This would often imply a need for approval by the authorities. In any case, the procedure for treatment of nonconformities should be well defined beforehand. To ensure verifiability and possibility of supervision of nonconformities, the decisions must be properly recorded as well.

Having treated the nonconformity in a justifiable manner, it is important to analyse why it

166 Quality assurance

occurred, i.e. to find the root cause, and implement the necessary measures to prevent recurrences. Such measures are usually called Corrective Actions. The analysis also includes an evaluation of the present nonconformity in view of previous ones, in order to discover and correct prospective unfortunate trends as early as possible. If, for example, a significantly increasing number of defects have been detected on drawings after they have been distributed, this could be a reason for tightening up the Self-Check requirement on the designers. Alternatively, the drawing software programs should be re-checked (verified).

6.3 Quality assurance in engineering and design of concrete structures