News Release
| Release Number: | 97-113 |
| Dated: | 10/22/1997 |
| Contact: | Matt Rabe, 503-808-4510 |
Portland, Ore. -- The Portland District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, recently received its certification as an ISO 9001 organization. The certification follows a two-year internal analysis and clarification of the agency's business processes.
Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance Limited of Houston, Texas, the certification firm that performed the audit which compares an agency's business processes with standards recognized worldwide, awarded the certification to the engineering agency's Planning and Engineering Division in August. These standards ensure that an agency has a management system and process in place to consistently develop high quality products.
The division is responsible for planning and designing civil works projects such as: fish ladders and fish passage facilities on the Columbia-Snake river system to find the best ways to move migrating fish, juvenile and adult, past the dams safely and quickly; geology and soils engineering works; hydraulic design, sedimentation and water quality studies; concrete control and design work; architectural design; and surveying and photogrammetry studies. These employees also were involved in the design of most of the federal dams, navigation locks, and flood and erosion control facilities currently in place throughout the region. The division's engineers, geologists, hydrologists and scientists don't only work on the design phase, but also remain involved during the construction and continuing operation phases of each project with which they are working.
"[The entire certification process] has been very beneficial in helping us properly identify and clarify our work processes, integrate the ISO concept and monitor results to see that the ISO standards are being followed," said Howard Jones, the division's chief. "We literally had to break our business processes down and rebuild them. We really had to look seriously and earnestly at how we do things?"
Jones feels the ISO process will ultimately result in the agency producing better quality products as a result of clarified product development processes along with increased interaction with its customers.
The Portland District certification is only the second in the Corps. The Corps' Louisville District, headquartered in Louisville, Ky., received its certification earlier this year.
ISO is derived from the Greek word isos, which means equal. ISO began through a European initiative to create equal standards for economic trade between the participating countries of the European Community. The plan created by the EC was modeled after an existing U.S. military specification on quality.