MCWD upgrades ISO accreditation

To further improve the quality of water and service that it provides to its customers, the Metro Cebu Water District is presently upgrading its ISO accreditation to internationally accepted quality management system standards.

The water district's internal auditors composed of 13 MCWD department and division managers have conducted an audit on the water district's quality management system last December 6 to December 19 last year. The audit assessed the extent of MCWD's quality management system's compliance to the ISO requirements.

During the audit, the auditing team found out that the water district's quality management system is already about 70 percent complete.

The audit activities covered all departments' processes in verifying the records at random and/or evidences of effective implementation of processes, the procedures undertaken to improve the output and performance of processes, to validate the adequacy and upkeep of infrastructure and the suitability of work environment.

MCWD, which is ISO 9001:1994 certified, is the only water district in the country with such accreditation, and is now hoping to get the ISO 9001:2000 version, an internationally accepted quality management system standard.

Tertuliana Andaya, MCWD manager for public affairs, said that MCWD is now focused on continued improvement of their work processes and enhancement of customers' satisfaction.

At present, she added that the MCWD's ISO steering group headed by lawyer Ronnie Legaspi is working to get the certification from the Bureau Veritas Quality Internationale by August 2007.

Andaya said that with the cooperation and participation of all the employees and officials of the water district, they are hoping for the success of the certification of MCWD quality management system. - Wenna A. Berondo