Someone pointed me to the Core Solutions website, which falsely claims that AS9100—not ISO 9001—was updated to include a climate change addendum. As usual, the news comes from Scott Dawson, who is about as smart as a bag of rocks if you dip the rocks in stupid sauce first. So, let’s set a few things straight.
ISO 9001 — not AS9100 — had an amendment issued a few months back. That amendment only applies to ISO 9001:2015 and, yes, requires companies to consider climate change as a possible issue when determining the context of the organization. But Dawson’s article calls it an “AS9109 Climate Change Amendment,” which doesn’t exist.
You see, AS9100 is a standalone standard. It includes the text of ISO 9001, yes, but it copies that text and puts it into a different document, published by an entirely different company (SAE, not ISO). Updates to ISO 9001 don’t automatically carry over into AS9100 until the AS9100 standard is updated to include them and republished. That has not happened.
While AS9100 itself hasn’t been updated or amended, the IAQG did release a ruling on the matter that you’d have to hunt down to find. I’ll do the work for you, and give you that link here. (The link will be dead as soon as they update the resolutions, so don’t expect it to work for very long.) The resolution just states that IAQG expects AS9100 certification bodies to treat the ISO 9001 addendum the same for AS9100 audits as they would for ISO 9001 audits.
It’s a lazy way to incorporate the change without revising the AS9100 standard or issuing a bogus “addendum” like ISO did.
Because AS9100 audits are supposed to issue simultaneous certificates to both ISO 9001 and AS9100, the AS9100 standard must remain in complete lockstep with the ISO 9001 standard. This has never been a problem before because ISO had never issued a weirdo “amendment” before, much less one that entirely bypassed all international consensus and voting as it did with the 2024 Amendment 1. Yes, back in 2008, the ISO 9001 standard was updated against international consensus and issued as an “amendment.” But that update was published as an entirely new version of the standard (“ISO 9001:2008.”) ISO is banking on the fact that you don’t remember that.
Now, ISO is using this new definition of the term “amendment” to mean it can update a standard without any pesky international voting. The IAQG isn’t suited for that and has no method to address in situ updates by the ISO Executive that don’t go through formal voting.
But yeah, you’d better implement it for AS9100, too. (Oxebridge clients, see this article on how to use the COTO Log to do it.)
But, no… AS9100 itself was not amended or updated. You’d hope an alleged TAG 176 dude would know that, but you’d be disappointed.
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
