Business View Caribbean - February 2016 47
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
