Kennicon Engineering Ltd

Business View Caribbean 5 I went to the Bureau of Standards and I took all the available courses in quality. And we decided that that was what we were going to do. So, in 1999, we be- came ISO 9001 and 9002, certified. We became the first company doing our type of business to become ISO in Trinidad.” Once KEL achieved that certification, it had to change the way it did things, including doing quality checks on everything from the planning stages of a project, onward. “You had to do a quality plan to get a job done,” he explains. “You had to have quality inspectors; you had to do an inspection at every pro- cess before moving on; and then you had to do a final inspection.” As demanding as they were, the ISO standards allowed the company to improve it operations; there was re- duced spoilage, better quality products, and more timely completion of all projects. Mohamed believed that in addition to improving performance internally, certification was a sign that his company had been recognized for efficiency and expertise, and that cer- tification could be employed as a good marketing tool. “In 2002, we added an APIQ1 Certification for oil and gas,” he says. (APIQ1 is the American Petroleum Insti- tute’s (API) Quality Management System Specification for manufacturing organizations in the petroleum and natural gas industry. In a competitive sector, APIQ1 provides a powerful driver for improving organizational efficiency, effectiveness, profitability, and long-term survival. Nearly 4200 companies in 78 countries are APIQ1 certified.) Market success, however, took a little longer than an- ticipated. “What we found during the first couple of years,” says Mohamed, “was that companies were not gravitating towards us. It took us a couple of years to really understand that the ISO is not a marketing tool, but a tool that you have to work inside/out to change