(First Amendment-protected, Constitutionally-protected free speech opinions incoming!) If the sun has risen in the east, then that means it’s another day that ISO TC 176 scumbags are out there cashing in on their ISO 9001 development work, all while claiming, hand-on-heart, to be unpaid “volunteers.”
You’ve seen it before. For the ISO 9001:2015 version, the top TC 176’ers of the day, Jack West, Charles Cianfrani, Lorri Hunt, Alka Jarvis, and Paul Palmes — among others — all started selling expensive seminars and webinars on the pending changes long before the draft standard was even released. They used their unpaid positions on TC 176 to boost their private consultancies, often to great effect.
Now, for the 2026 revision, a new crop of scumbags is at it. This time it’s ISO toady Devindra Chattergoon and former NQA salesboy and Elsmar Cove punching bag Andy Nichols. While you can buy a copy of the new ISO 9001:2026 DIS for yourself — or just read my teardown for free — Chattergoon and Nichols are now selling a webinar to go over the changes, all while giving exactly zero shits about the obvious conflicts of interest here.
As always, TC 176’ers get paid more if they make the standard incomprehensible. If they made it easy to understand, Chattergoon and Nichols couldn’t sell any seminars explaining the thing that they, themselves, made confusing.
The 2026 version is poised to be the worst version of ISO 9001 in its history, and that’s saying a lot, considering the 2015 version is so universally disliked. Most agree that the 2000 edition was the high-water mark, but the 2015 gang saw fit to try to rewrite it anyway. They made it worse, of course: clauses are in the wrong order, PCDA is broken, important terms change their meaning in the middle of the standard, and prior clauses on things like preventive action and — I’m not kidding — shipping were deleted outright. (Yes, according to TC 176, you spend all that time making a product only to have it sit in your warehouse and never get delivered.)
The 2026 version fixes none of these problems, and instead adds nonsensical made-up garbage like “opportunity-based thinking” and a host of other self-inflicted problems. Then, the same dummies who made the standard worse added a massive book at the end in which they editorialize on ISO 9001 guidance ideas, which will only result in the cover price of the standard getting jacked up for no rational reason.
Chattergoon runs a consultancy out of Trinidad called Quality Plus Consultants, and Nichols runs Quality Nation. For fun, click the link to Nichols’ website and see how well this quality expert’s website works. He’s also a full-on weirdo, at least in my opinion, going way the hell out of his way to ensure he is never photographed. In fact, the only known photo of him from an official event shows him putting on a mask to hide his face. (If I find out he’s hideously deformed, I am gonna feel like a piece of shit. No, wait, not really, since he’s responsible for the mess of an ISO 9001 standard.)
Chattergoon has been the subject of ethics complaints already, for violating ISO’s official policy on social media engagement due to his tendency to publicly harass anyone who dares suggest TC 176 might have its head up its ass. But Chattergoon — who comes from Trinidad, where they have all of 50 (as in fifty) ISO certifications in the entire country — is a loyal footsoldier to ISO executives and will do whatever they say. So they grant him authority over something he seems to know little of and won’t hold him accountable to their policies.
Meanwhile, here’s the recent image of Nichols:
Nichols may be remembered as the former regional sales representative at the certification body NQA, who for decades prostrated himself at Marc Smith’s Elsmar Cove, only to be repeatedly berated and humiliated. Then, in a March 2025 article for Quality Magazine on the ISO 9001 update, Nichols leaked this bit of inside information, using his role on TC 176:
The TC 176 committee decided, some time ago, that there was no compelling reason to change the 2015 revision and, as a result, started the process with a view to a revision in 2025.
If that sentence makes no sense to you, it’s because it doesn’t. Quality Magazine doesn’t edit stuff, so folks like Nichols can string whatever words they like in any sequence they want, and they will still publish it.
Nichols then quoted “DISC theory” in a batshit discussion of a concept that was never even discussed as being included in ISO 9001:
By way of example, if the new version of the standard required some type of behavioral evaluation of staff to ensure they are assigned to appropriate positions and roles, it may be important to have someone in the organization become competent in the use of the various tools (D.i.S.C. theory etc.) Simply sending someone on a training course isn’t likely to accomplish this.
DISC theory was a psychological tool invented by William Moulton Marston in 1928 — yes, just about 100 years ago — and includes a psychological profile which then “categorizes individuals into four personality traits: dominance, inducement, submission, and compliance.”
I hear a lot of countries are absolutely fed up with the ISO 9001:2026 draft and the authoritarian approach ISO Secretary-General Sergio Mujica and his goons, including Chattergoon and Sam Somerville, have taken to get this thing across the finish line. Other than them, there are not many people happy with the draft, but ISO only makes money when standards are offered for sale, so Mujica has to force the document out of draft as quickly as possible. Mujica’s personal salary is on the line here, and he’s getting term-limited in 2026, so he has to hurry.
Whereas the 2015 version had about 75% private consultants and CB reps working on the standard, that number has jumped to nearly 100% for the 2026 version. Nothing good comes from a standard that is developed by exactly ZERO end users. ISO has rules on ensuring a fair and balanced makeup of TC 176, but under Mujica, those are also being ignored.
I guess this isn’t as bad as Lorri Hunt, who was selling seminars on the ISO 9001:2026 update years before the update process had even started.
This is what passes for good standards development under Mujica, who was previously investigated for drug trafficking and money laundering when he headed up Chile’s customs agency. I guess we should all thank our lucky stars he’s not laundering drug money out of the ISO headquarters, at least?
Although drugs might explain a lot of the behavior by Chattergoon and Nichols.
Anyway, don’t freak out too much. We do plan on updating Q001 to reflect the changes and that standard will be released under a creative commons or similar structure, for the cost of NO dollars at all. The future of standards is open source, since publishing companies like ISO, BSI and ANSI have decided to abandon their roles as non-profit stewards and instead run down a path of mindless profiteering.
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
