For years Mireaux has been helping clients become ISO certified but in a few cases Mireaux has struggled to ensure that clients applied the best of ISO 9001. As Miriam Boudreaux, President of Mireaux Management Solutions points out, “In many regards ISO 9001 is very broad, and therefore; people may do the bare minimum and still comply with the standard.”
Miriam who lives and breathes quality, gives a clear example of the strict requirements of API Spec Q1 9th Edition versus ISO 9001: “When it came to maintenance, we tried to tell our ISO 9001 clients that having a list of their assets, creating preventive maintenance checklists, and conducting preventive maintenance, is the right thing to do. But preventive maintenance is a word nowhere to be found in ISO 9001:2008, so it has always been a little hard, for people who want to do the bare minimum, to understand why we coached them to do that.”
Luckily most of the clients that come to Mireaux, want to do the right thing and want to take full advantage of the ISO 9001 standard. Now, with the advent of the API Specification Q1 9th edition and API Spec Q2, Mireaux is delighted to see that many of the broad requirements in ISO 9001 are being explicitly solidified. Miriam adds “With API, no longer do we have to explain our clients why we are asking them to implement a robust preventive maintenance program, is an API requirement and that’s good enough reason.”
Miriam believes the API Specification Q1 9th edition or Q2, are great manuals for oil and gas companies to run their business, and encourages companies to not compromise quality, but rather strive to do things right and aim to deliver the best products and services.