The International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) has just purged its OASIS system of a half-dozen serious complaints that it had been ignoring for years. The move puts to rest any pretense that IAQG is interested in upholding accreditation principles for the AS9100 certification scheme, and that it now endorses overt fraud.
The other day, I received a flurry of automated emails informing me that all my open OASIS tickets had been closed simultaneously. Logging into my account, I was met with this updated OASIS ticket status report:
That’s six tickets in all, none of which were responded by any of the parties, and all of which remained upon and active until the point they shut them down in one swift blow. Let’s look at just how serious these were.
Two of the tickets are related to the ProShop ERP scandal, where two AS9100-certified companies bragged during a live webinar that their certification body, IAPMO SCB, violated accreditation rules. The clients didn’t know they were accidentally revealing very serious violations by the CB, and later, ProShop and IAPMO SCB scrambled to get the recordings of the webinar removed from the internet to cover it up. Ticket 302216 was filed in April 2024 against the CB, who blew it off and did nothing. That prompted ticket 302462, issued in June of 2024 to IAPMO’s accreditation body, ANAB, who then did nothing and tried to hide the evidence related to the investigation into how IAPMO was hiding evidence. You can’t make this shit up.
The end result of that mess was that AS9100 certification bodies were given a green light to bill clients for full audits, but allow their auditors to leave early, effectively stealing client money by billing them for services never actually provided. Oh, and then falsifying the audit reports later to make it appear as though the audit had taken place. In any other universe, that would be theft and fraud, but in the IAQG and ANAB world we live in, this is normal business operations.
Ticket 57506 was issued in April 2023 after we found out someone at IAQG had used inside information to grab the “IA9100.com” domain name before everyone else, a serious ethical breach. IAQG ignored it, and we learned yesterday that that “someone” was Jim Lee of SimpleQue. I reported on that here. Lee and SimpleQue were never investigated, and they are now set to benefit for decades thanks to IAQG’s shoddy ethics.
Ticket 302943 was issued in July 2024, related to the certificate mill American Global Standards (AGS), run by Steven Kenneally, after he was caught issuing fake, non-IAQG certificates to AS9100. Now, the IAQG was careful to trademark “AS9100” and was supposed to use that as a means of stopping certificate mills from issuing counterfeit certificates. But, as usual, the IAQG did nothing since it has no on-staff legal counsel and zero dollars allotted for its legal budget. Fake AS9100 certificates continue to proliferate, and the IAQG not a single shit gives.
Then there are the last two. Internal BSI documents revealed the certification body had adopted an official policy directing AS9100 auditors to issue a minimum number of nonconformities not based on actual objective evidence, but to support BSI’s financial goals instead. BSI charges extra fees if an auditor has to work to close a nonconformity. In effect, the BSI documents appeared to prove that BSI was forcing its auditors to make up fake nonconformities just to generate additional revenue, which amounts to criminal fraud. Ticket 46116 was issued way back in May of 2020 – that’s five years ago! — on this matter, asking BSI to stop the practice. BSI ignored it entirely, and it appears the official policy is still in place, although auditors appear to be ignoring it entirely.
Ticket 49792 was then issued in April of 2021 after we learned just how rotten the apple was. Not only did IAQG not hold BSI accountable, but it also decided to adopt minimum audit nonconformity quotas as an official IAQG metric. So that ticket was issued against the IAQG leadership. They also ignored it.
Now, keep in mind this latest list doesn’t include a number of other OASIS tickets that IAQG had been previously shut down without action. Those included a 2019 case where IAQG training partner Probitas covered up for an AS9100 auditor who had falsified his aerospace industry experience.
A 2014 complaint was filed after trainer and auditor Richard Randall gave official IAQG-approved classes on how to use hypnosis on clients during AS9100 audits to make them open to suggestions and less likely to oppose audit findings. He later lied about his hypnosis background, but was never held accountable, and still holds Probitas auditor credentials.
Another ticket was filed in 2020 against SAI Global (now Intertek) after their former head of aerospace accreditation, Deann Minamino, appeared to argue that in order to resolve a client audit, Oxebridge should have traveled through time. She then announced that SAI auditors were “moving away from” recording evidence, despite every standard on auditing everywhere requiring it.
Multiple tickets were filed in 2021 and 2022 against Quality Austria and the accreditation body, Akkreditierung Austria, for a host of violations related to QA’s operations in Russia in Qatar. Akkreditierung Austria consistently mashed the “close complaint” key without due process, never actually resolving anything. Oxebridge had to hire an Austrian attorney to take the matter to court in that country, but AA used its clout as a government ministry to get the case stalled in court. The case was never brought before a judge.
In 2019, we filed a ticket requesting IAQG clarify a practice known as “downgrading.” This is where a client would be undergoing an AS9100 audit, but then, if nonconformities arose, switch it to a simpler ISO 9001 audit mid-stream. IAQG never responded to that request either, even though the practice clearly violates ISO 17021.
All told, I estimate more than a dozen very serious, thoughtful, and important matters were never addressed by the IAQG because it would have had to have taken uncomfortable positions with key stakeholders like BSI, Probitas, or its own committee members.
So the next time an airplane falls out of the sky, this might be a contributing factor.
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 35 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
