Service companies qualifications

Before any fire protection service company is selected to perform inspecting, testing, and maintenance on fire protection systems at the facility, they should be qualified. The service company qualifications may include ... 

Similarly, although the benefit of good industrial experience cannot be underestimated, service company representatives who lack appropriate technical qualification will always be limited in their ability to fully interpret analytical results and trends and provide authoritative recommendations. 

It is important that the outside service company meet the facility pre-qualification criteria. As part of the selection process, it must be determined if the service company is knowledgeable and experienced in the types of fire protection systems they will be designing, installing, or maintaining. 

This section deals with the qualifications of personnel who manage the fire protection equipment and systems and conduct the inspections, testing, and maintenance. This includes qualifying service companies and qualification of service company employees. 

The level of qualifications for personnel expected should be specified in the bid package or purchase order. The facility should require the service company to provide evidence that the personnel performing inspections, testing, and maintenance meet the qualifications. Safe work procedures should be extended to all service company personnel. 

The importance of the qualification process of technical systems in the pharmaceutical industry has been steadily increasing over the last 10 years. It has been driven primarily by the requirements of regulatory bodies and not by the need to save money in this part of the industry. If the industry made use of the full scope of the GMP requirements, the qualification process would be more efficient and the cost of qualification would drop. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies want to protect themselves from a less than perfect result during a regulatory inspection and therefore demand 120% effort from their suppliers and service companies. New methods and tools must be implemented to reach the goal of qualifying a technical system while minimizing effort. 

Because Amdevco/Century no longer exists. Safety Board investigators could locate no records to indicate the qualification steps Amdevco may have performed before Century marketed its pipe to Iowa Public Service Company. A plastic pipe manufacturer would normally have obtained documentation from its resin supplier indicating that the resin material had a sufficient long-term hydrostatic strength. Code B31.8 required and ASTM D2513 recommended that polyethylene pipe manufacturers perform certain quality control tests on production samples, including twice-per- year sustained pressure tests. 

Iowa Public Service Company continued to purchase DuPont plastic piping fittings until fittings were available from Century. MidAmerican Energy made technical procurement decisions via a Gas Standards Committee. According to company officials, the company has implemented a process to ensure that it continues to receive quality products once the products have passed an initial qualification process. 

State institutions may support pilot and reference companies within the scope of innovation promotion. They may promote vertical bnt also horizontal communication (e g. branch dialognes) and especially provide basic preliminary services for small and medinm-sized enterprises, snch as e.g. free offers of information about best practices, branch benchmarks or also initiate qualification programmes. 

In general, the provision of product information is the responsibility of the medical department in so far as the information sought and provided is non-promotional in nature. Companies vary in how such a department may be integrated within a medical division but the principles underl)dng the provision of such a service are relatively constant. The qualifications... 

The Clayton Wallis Company s CompGeo Online service (707-996-0967, www.claytonwallis.com) offers online information about salaries based on geographic location. For example, if you re working in healthcare, you can determine what people with your qualifications earn around the country using the information offered at this website. CompGeo offers salary information for over 1,200 job classifications. 

Qualification activities are usually undertaken in order to characterize a facility s services and utilities as well as the equipment that would be used as part of a manufacturing process. As indicated earlier, these activities will include installation and operational activities as part of the validation function. Most companies will issue a report that documents the features of the facility s processing rooms, such as the electrical, water, gas, and HVAC services, for the installation qualification. Table 5 is a generic outline of the items that would be found in the IQ report. Whenever the process equipment is permanendy fixed in these rooms, the report will also list the equipment as well as its operating requirements and features. See Table 6 for an outline of questions that would be used to complete a report, which includes equipment qualification. It is preferred that qualification occur as soon as the equipment or facility is ready for routine operation so that any unexpected results will be corrected by the equipment vendor and/or construction contractor. 

Throughout this chapter, reference will be made to the sponsor, a vendor, and a supplier. The sponsor refers to the company or organization contracting the services or materials. This is the organization performing the qualification. 

To the general rule regarding ownership of inventions, there are two important qualifications. First, if the inventor creates his invention under circumstances such that another supplies material, money, or other aid, that person, party, or company may become entitled to a personal shop right to use the invention free of liability to the inventor. This shop right is not assignable as such to others, nor can it be licensed, but it can be transferred in a sale of the whole assets and business of the holder. Second, if the inventor makes the invention under circumstances such that he has sold his services in inventing to another party or person, that person or party may become the owner of the full title to invention. 

The supplier s Project and Qnality Plans specify project responsibilities, procedures, and deliverable documentation. The supplier s scope of work usually revolves around Design and Development, Coding, Configuration and Bnild, and Development Testing. The URS and User Qualification may also be specified in the plans as reqnested by a pharmacentical or healthcare company. The supplier firm should be encouraged to include a statement of its development capability for the service or equipment they are providing. This statement conld be based on a firm s ISO 9000 accreditation. Resumes of key staff should be available to support the capability statement. 

Equipment selection is often based on performance specifications, pricing, features, or vendor s technical or service support. Major companies tend to purchase HPLC from one or two vendors to reduce cost in system qualification, equipment service, and operator training. The compatibility to an existing chromatographic data-handling network often dominates the purchase decision for HPLC equipment. 

Usually the performance of a company is assessed by financial criteria. This may seem perfectly appropriate because the survival of a company depends on adequate profits. All other objectives (e.g., the quality of products and services) are pursu not for their own sake but rather in support of financial long-term success. Within the last decade, however, researchers and practitioners have come to the conclusion that because financial criteria relate to the past, they reflect only part of a comptmy s performance. The future performance and growth of a company depend equally on soft factors that are difficult to quantify, such as the quality of leadership or the qualification of the employees. The idea of integrating soft and hard factors is realized in the beilanced scorecard concept (Kaplan tmd Norton 1996), which is gaining increasing acceptance worldwide. 

Imagine that you are working with one of the forensic science analytical testing companies and have just undertaken a piece of work at the request of the crown prosecution service. You have analysed a brown powder and found it to contain 70% of the controlled drug diamorphine (heroin). The counsel for the defence has requested that the sample be analysed by an independent laboratory of its choosing. The sample is reanalysed and there is a dispute in relation to the result because the defence analyst finds only 10% of the controlled drug diamorphine. You attend court and are asked to justify your results. Your lab has a rigorous quality assurance system that includes method validation, system suitability, and instrument qualification the defence lab does not. Your result is accepted as the correct value. 

Provide adequate oversight of all personnel hiring and training processes, including qualification of service agents, to ensure adherence to controlled substance and alcohol regulations and company policies and procedures. 

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