2019 Updates in the Aerospace Sector

02 January 2019

We have seen a fair few changes in the Aerospace sector over the last year and we are preparing for updates that we will see in 2019 including OASIS, transitions and KPIs.

OASIS

As soon as it is finished and everyone is starting to get used to it, they go and change it. The IAQG are now working on the next generation of the OASIS database, there is no need to panic just yet as we are talking at least a 5 year lead into this. The new OASIS database is going to be bigger and encompass a lot of other activities such as training and it will not be called OASIS, it will be called the 'IAQG Enterprise System'. They may incorporate OASIS into the IAQG Enterprise System but we do not know yet, it is very early days in the process. We will of course keep you updated of the progress but don’t expect any activity for at least 12 months from now.

Now onto the bad stuff, the OASIS fees are increasing as of 1st January 2019. We know it is short notice but we have only been informed ourselves. To be fair, the fees have not increased since 2002 which is pretty incredible considering the amount of software development that has gone into the system over the years. The new fees are as follows:

Initial Assessments-$500 which is no change
Reassessments and transfer assessments-increased from $325 to $500
Special visit to add a new site to your already existing certificate-$200 up from $125.

There are some other costs but these impact NQA and other Certification Bodies and not clients so you do not need to worry about those. Generally speaking it’s not a huge increase and you continue to not pay anything during surveillance visits.

There are also some little tweaks to OASIS reports which do not directly impact clients, these more impact auditors during assessments.

Transition Update

99.9% of all clients have transitioned which is incredible considering there are 23500+ aerospace certificates issued, we expected a much larger fallout during the transition process. There has been a huge amount of effort from Certification Bodies, Clients and Auditors to get everyone transitioned in time so well done to all. We will be releasing a number of webinars and articles throughout 2019 with some of the lessons learnt from the new standard, areas being missed and other tips which we can share with you to make your system more robust and beneficial.

KPIs

KPIs will be a hot topic in 2019, many of you should be used to having KPIs in place for a number of years now and auditors are now being pushed to interrogate these going forward. NQA have an auditor conference in January 2019 and will be impacting some additional knowledge onto auditors on how to manage KPIs and verify the integrity of the data. Please ensure you have fully identified your KPIs, the data is sound and they actually measure the effectiveness of the process it is measuring, not some other process.

This is one of the weaknesses we have found over the transition so will be covering these during our upcoming webinars and articles in 2019.