1. WIFI: QACE PW: Wind_mill49
QACE Assessor‘s Meeting January QACE Office Crown House 72, Hammersmith Road.
WIFI: QACE PW: Wind_mill49

2. Welcome

3. Agenda DAY 1: Tuesday 9th January 2018 9:30 Welcome 1.
 1.
Feedback from the Board
 2.
November 2017 Annual General Meeting
 3.
2017 Assessment Results and feedback
 4.
End User Workshop (EUW) 2017 5.
Results of the 2017 Collective Recommendations
13:00-14:00
LUNCH 6.
EU Assessment, response and actions 7.
Individual Recommendations (results from 2017 & plans for 2018)
 8.
Changes to the QMS 9.
Contracts
10.
Housekeeping
11.
Training
11.1 Material for the 2018 Auditor’s Refresher Training Course
11.2 Audit Requirements Project
11.3 QACE Notice Requirement
Agenda

4. Agenda DAY 2: Wednesday 10th January 2018 9:00
Agenda item 10.
Outstanding items from Day 1
2018 Assessment Programme planning.
Full day.
13:00-14:00
LUNCH
Continued.
Agenda

5. Feedback from the Board
Agenda 1

6. November 2017 Annual General Meeting
Agenda 2

7. 2017 Assessment Results and feedback.
18/11/2018
2017 Assessment Results and feedback.
Agenda 3

8. 2018 QACE Assessments visits
18/11/2018
2018 QACE Assessments visits
Assessment Type
2017
2016
2015
Head Office 8 4 7
Control Office 3 6
Plan Approval 10 5
Survey Location 15 18 9
VCA NC 12
VCA SiS 13 17 11
ISM 2 1
Total Audits Assessed 61 60 48

9. KEY
2014
2015
2016
Assessor Locations
QACE Assessments

10. Assessment Locations 2017
61 different audit types will be attended in 2017.

11. Audit Scheme Effectiveness
Fit for purpose.
From the evidence of audits and findings the level expertise and experience with the QSCS requirements is now consistently high and, married with ISO:9001 expertise, is proving a highly effective audit scheme.

12. What do we do with the audit results?
The Secretariat reviews all audit finding to determine trends for:
Collective and Individual recommendations
Dissemination of Best Practices
QSCS feedbacks
ACB and auditor’s awareness

13. Significant issue from last year (2017):
Examples of VCAs being held at too early a stage of surveys:
- New buildings at the block inspection stage
- Kick-off meetings for ESP surveys
Issue of QACE Requirements Notice No IACS feedback

14. Two of this year’s (2018) significant issues.
RO’s transition to new risk-based ISO 9001: 2015 standard.
RO resources due to downsized operations and headcount
With 12 different implementations audited by 4 different ACBs QACE will review the consistency of the transitions to ISO 9001:2015
After reducing headcount, closing offices and increased remote surveyors QACE will review risk mitigation, adequacy of resources, adequacy of provisions and control of remote surveyors in 2018

15. End User Workshop (EUW) 2017
18/11/2018
End User Workshop (EUW) 2017
Agenda 4
November was the second year of official
QACE / ACB meetings.

16. Collective Recommendations (CRs)
EU Regulation (EC) No 391/2009 Article 11 2(d) requires ‘adoption of individual and collective recommendations for the improvement of the recognised organisations’ processes and internal control mechanisms’.
Auditing the requirements and driving improvement the ACBs have been asked to comment on this year’s CRs, as well as the ROs.
Agenda 5

17. 2017 Collective Recommendations
1/ Audit of remote locations and surveyors. ‘Areas of the world that are distant from the RO’s control, and where high volumes of work are not held, do not have the same level of experience with complex surveys. Local, restricted service national trade vessels may not be subject to the most stringent level of control. QACE recommends a focus on the work held by these offices and remote surveyors.
A better way:
QACE recommends an audit of representative offices and, where inclusion in the audit plan may not be practical, remote review of office and surveyors jobs and local vessel survey control information’

18. 2/Exclusion of early stages of surveys from Vertical Contract Audit
2/Exclusion of early stages of surveys from Vertical Contract Audit. ‘While the difficulties of organising the audits during ships in operation surveys are well known, the intention of Vertical Contract Audits is to witness the survey of substantial requirements. To that end QACE will specify a requirement that survey planning kick-off meetings are not an appropriate subject for VCA. For the same reason QACE will also specify that New Construction VCAs are to be held where plan approval is complete and where the ship is at erection stage and that audit of block inspection is not at an appropriate subject’.
QACE Requirements Notice was issued on 5th September 2017

19. 3/ Closed loop Audit Focus Area reporting
3/ Closed loop Audit Focus Area reporting. Audit focus areas, have been identified from finding trends and concern from industry partners.
Where necessary the auditor team have been trained in the issue and are required to include the points during appropriate audits. To date the results of the audits in relation to the focus areas have not been collected and analysed to identify effective measures, or the results reported back to the interested parties.
QACE will explore methods for achieving this goal

20. 4/ Extension of process auditing to Rule development.
QACE considers Rule Development as a critical process in ensuring new external and internal requirements are effectively implemented into the RO’s Rules and instructions in advance of the mandatory implementation date. Typically, audited in the Rule Development department of the RO’s Head Offices.
QACE sees some scope in ACB’s considering the end to QACE end process from the identification of requirements (external affairs), control within the Rule development plan, the technical appraisal, Rule inclusion, publication, training, advice to surveyors, updates to systems and controls. Important in the process is how the RO verifies the effectiveness of the process and individual Rule inclusions

21. QACE 2018 Audit Areas
RO resources due to downsized operations and headcount.
The effectiveness of Report Verification.
Implementation of Water Ballast Management requirements.
Controls over local ‘national service’ service non-SOLAS ships.
Effectiveness of local quality KPIs in driving performance.

22. Ship Targeting and Fleet Monitoring
QACE is considering developing requirements in line with the ISO 9001:2015 philosophy of risk identification, management and mitigation.
QACE continues to press for effective implementation of surveyor’s identification of ship maintenance concerns during surveys and fleet monitoring or ship targeting and the positive effect on PSC performance.

23. RO’s 3-YEAR AUDIT FINDINGS TREND ANALYSIS
Strengths & Weaknesses

24. Commission’s Assessment
EMSA inspection 18th May 2016
EMSA Draft report 28th October 2016
Commission‘s Assessment report 7th September 2017
Deadline 30th November 2017
Extended to 31st December 2017
QACE response submitted before the deadline
Agenda 6

25. ‘Four main areas of concern’:
QACE has not yet demonstrated evidence to indicate that it carries out its activities in accordance with the applicable international quality standards;
QACE's AoA do not effectively address conflict of interest situations for the members of the BoD;
QACE has not fulfilled its obligation to create an independent quality standard based on its interpretation of the ISO standard 9001 and ISO standard 17020, adapted to the specific features and obligations of the ROs;
QACE's assessment and certification process appears to be excessively vested with the existing arrangements between the ROs and the ACBs under the IACS QSCS

26. Recognised Organisation
Individual Recommendations
(results from 2017 & plans for 2018)
Agenda 7
Year
Recognised Organisation
2017
CCS
DNV GL
CRS NK RS
IRS
2018
ABS BV KR LR
PRS
RINA
2019

27. Individual Recommendations (IRs)
A trend analysis of the ACBs audit findings makes up a significant part of the IRs.
While the IRs are confidential between QACE and each RO QACE has been recommending that the ROs share the IRs and their response with their ACB. Most have been doing so already. The feedback from the ROs visited this year has been positive.
QACE proposes to implement the proposal from January 2018.

28. Changes to Quality Management System (QMS)
Agenda 8

29. Assessor Contracts
Agenda 9

30. Housekeeping New finance process Agenda 10 New invoice template
Invoice receipts
Exchange Rates
Agenda 10

31. Training
Agenda 11

32. January Auditor Training (Vladivostok)
Tim and I are looking forward to:
January Auditor Training (Vladivostok)
New statutory requirements training, with a focus on potential specific statutory Audit Focus Areas
Auditing local ‘national service’ non-SOLAS ships
Agenda 11.1

33. QACE Audit Requirements Project
Agenda 11.2

34. Further QACE Requirement Notices?
Agenda 11.3

35. 2017 Annual Report Will be forwarded to our interest parties
Published on our website
Provided for IMO MSC
Issued in accordance requirements of EU Regulation Art Out in April of each year. Recipients: EU Commission, COSS, Flag States, EMSA, IMO, ROs, ACBs, Interested Parties, Maritime Insurance Associations and Companies.
Annex A includes the QACE Collective Recommendations for the year ahead.
The 2018 report will contain an Interest Parties Survey
The report will include a
2018 Interested Parties Survey

36. Flag States as interested parties.
Reporting results of the assessments of RO QMS
Including implementation of new major statutory requirements.
Incorporation of flag interest areas into the audit programme.
Verification of product - surveys, audits and certificates issued.
QACE has had opening meetings with both the Paris and Tokyo MoUs to establish avenues of joint interest and will look for a meeting with the USCG

38. Lead Assessor’s recommendations for 2018 assessments
2018 Assessment Plan
Lead Assessor’s recommendations for 2018 assessments
Agenda 12

39. 18/11/2018

41. In order to reduce emissions from shipping, the European Union (EU) has introduced the shipping monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) regulation, which is designed to gather data on CO2 emissions based on ships’ fuel consumption.
I think we need to mention MRV at some stage during the meeting as to where QACE stand on it.
I asked LR rule development at the head office audit what was happening about it and they said nothing, in fact they had given it to LRQA and if you go onto LR website it tells you that LRQA have been certified to ISO and can carryout reviews of monitoring plans, review reports and verify emissions declaration and as I understand it they can issue a DoC , all of which kicks off in January. This certificate is required on board and if not present then the ship can be detained.
There is also an IMO amendment to MARPOL Annex VI coming out which is similar but less arduous which is their DCS (data collection system) which is running about 12 months behind MRV and will require amendments to SEEMP requiring a part II, this was not discussed at the HO audit
However some of the info applies to both requirements.
As such will LRQA require a visit in the future and at this point I don't know if it is even on the horizon with the ACBs, or maybe not required, perhaps QACE can decide.