Well, this is new. As you’ve seen, the IAF (now GACI) has given up all pretense of holding member Accreditation Bodies (ABs) and their attendant Certification Bodies (CBs) accountable to their so-called “mandatory” documents and ISO accreditation standards. Now, ABs and CBs can not only buy and operate consulting companies, but they can also outright sell consulting, despite ISO 17011 and ISO 17021-1 prohibiting it.
Until now, though, the flimsy workaround has been for the AB or CB to open up a “subsidiary” company that sells consulting. Same logo, same address, same top management, but filed under a different corporate filing (LLC, INC, Pty Ltd, etc.), to make it look like a “separate company.” It is so clearly not a separate company, but it gives the ABs enough room to sow doubt and then claim these conflicts of interest are conflicts of interest at all. Everyone is lying, but whatever.
This is the angle that Intertek, Bureau Veritas, and LRQA have pulled, and gotten away with it.
Unhappy with this boring approach, one country has come up with an alternative way to get around the rules.
India exports a lot of important things, like electronics, textiles, and jewelry, but its most important contribution to world trade is coming up with new ways to scam people. They have turned into high art.
Now meet NOICE, which — yes — is the same word you heard in that Key & Peele breakdance sketch. NOICE, which also goes under the name Quality Hub India, is selling both ISO 9001 certification services and QMS consulting, going so far as to put all the words together in a single sentence on their webpage.
Notice this part:
As an NABCB and IAF accredited organization, we empower businesses to achieve global standards, enhance performance, and drive continuous improvement through world-class audits, expert guidance, and customized quality solutions.
That sentence alone ties NABCB accreditation (while namedropping IAF) to both audits and consulting.
Meanwhile, over at the ISO 17021-1 standard that NABCB — India’s official AB, by the way — allegedly accredited NOICE to, here is what it says:
5.2.5 The certification body and any part of the same legal entity and any entity under the organizational control of the certification body shall not offer or provide management system consultancy.
Yeah, it’s pretty overt: a CB cannot do any management system consultancy, period.
So what clever way did NOICE come up with to get accredited anyway?
They sell QMS consulting, but call it something else. Instead, they call it “Business Consultancy.” And that, we are supposed to believe, was enough to fool the brain-damaged idiot accreditation auditors at NABCB. Here’s what they are offering:
It doesn’t stop there, though. They also sell TQM services, for Total Quality Management (TQM):
Now, ignoring the fact that QMS and TQM literally share two of the same exact words (“quality management“), I think you’d have to be pretty disingenuous to claim that TQM had nothing to do with a management system, as prohibited by ISO 17021-1. But now let’s meet NOICE’s CEO (and apparently its sole employee), Dr.
Aryan Viswakarma, who is gonna show you just how disingenuous he can be when I called NOICE out on this, on LinkedIn:
There’s a whole lot to unpack in that comment. First, notice how he pluralizes himself (“we“), which suggests he’s either French, pregnant, or has a mouse in his pocket. But then see how he invokes NABCB accreditation — as if that ensures any trust at all — and then claims that his consulting is “not related to QMS development or implementation.”
Sure, buddy. And India is located at the North Pole. Right.
Then he says, “There is a clear and well-defined segregation between our consulting and certification functions, which is formally documented and effectively maintained to ensure compliance with accreditation norms.” Except, remember what the actual accreditation norm said? Again, this part:
5.2.5 The certification body and any part of the same legal entity and any entity under the organizational control of the certification body shall not offer or provide management system consultancy.
It doesn’t say a CB can offer it and then “segregate” it from certification; it says a CB cannot offer it at all.
Now, the ABs have stopped enforcing this years ago, so bodies like NABCB buy into this bullshit argument, ignoring the fact that it overtly violates ISO 17021-1.
At which point, Dr. Viswakarma wanted to remind you that he’s not only a disingenuous scammer, but also kind of an asshole:
That last part sorta reads like a threat — what am I getting well from? — but I’ll ignore it for now.
So we can add NOICE to the growing list of fully-accredited CBs offering consulting, even though they are totally, completely, irreversibly not allowed to do so.
Meanwhile, IAF/GACI’s new figurehead, Brahim Houla, is destroying the climate by flying all around the world on a rockstar-style “world tour” to promote the IAF scams, instead of ensuring anyone is actually verifying the credibility of the ISO certification scheme. I’m told Houla is pushing for a more aggressive, active role in GACI policy making, something not usually done by the IAF “Chair,” which is a symbolic position. We will see how badly he fucks it up.
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
