{"id":3782,"date":"2014-07-13T06:40:30","date_gmt":"2014-07-13T11:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/?p=3782"},"modified":"2014-07-17T20:33:01","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T01:33:01","slug":"smithers-pushes-ahead-on-sn9001-training-alongside-consultant-despite-complaint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/smithers-pushes-ahead-on-sn9001-training-alongside-consultant-despite-complaint\/","title":{"rendered":"Smithers Pushes Ahead on SN9001 Training Alongside Consultant, Despite Complaint"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Smithers Quality Assessments is continuing to market SN9001 training alongside consultant John Allin, despite a complaint filed to the registrar alleging that doing so violates conflict of interest rules identified in ISO 17021.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/snowfighters.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-3783\" src=\"http:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/snowfighters.jpg\" alt=\"snowfighters\" width=\"474\" height=\"329\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/snowfighters.jpg 725w, https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/snowfighters-150x104.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a>A third training event <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snowfightersinstitute.com\/iso-training.html\" target=\"_blank\">has been added<\/a> for August 2014, and is being co-hosted by Smithers and the Snowfighters Institute, an organization operated by John Allin, who has emerged as the first SN9001 implementation consultant. Mr. Allin has extensive snow and ice management experience, but does not appear to have any ISO 9001 experience.<\/p>\n<p>Smithers is accredited by ANAB under ISO 17021 to issue ISO 9001 and SN9001 certificates. ISO 17021 prohibits accredited registrars from\u00a0marketing its services alongside any single consulting firm. The Oxebridge complaint alleges that the Smithers\/Allin arrangement violates at least\u00a0eight separate clauses of ISO 17021, most dealing with ensuring that Smithers maintains a firewall between its activities and those of consultants, in order to ensure objectivity and impartiality. The arrangement creates an environment whereby a reasonable person may assume that Smithers&#8217; auditors would &#8220;go easy&#8221; on any customer that had hired John Allin for their implementation consulting, since the two organizations have invested so much effort and money into &#8220;co-branding&#8221; their services.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">A copy of the full complaint may be downloaded\u00a0<a style=\"color: #990000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/downloads\/Smithers%20complaint.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. (PDF \u2013 \u00a0319K)<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Smithers has acknowledged receipt of the complaint, but has not provided any other communication on it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">A similar complaint was filed against Smithers by Oxebridge in 2010, when it was discovered to have been engaged in co-marketing with a consulting firm started by a former Smithers executive. In that case, Smithers made corrections to its marketing policy, which it would appear it has since violated with the SN9001 events.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Smithers, John Allin and accreditation body ANAB have all been instrumental in the development of SN9001, an ISO 9001 variant targeted at the snow and ice management industry. Oxebridge has argued that SN9001 and its related overhead expenses are not required, as ISO 9001 is a generic quality management standard, applicable to any industry as-is.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smithers Quality Assessments is continuing to market SN9001 training alongside consultant John Allin, despite a complaint filed to the registrar alleging that doing so violates conflict of interest rules identified in ISO 17021.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2483,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[61,50,113,23,83,52,14,231,91,92,232],"class_list":["post-3782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-accreditation-bodies","tag-anab","tag-asca","tag-certification-bodies","tag-iaf","tag-iso-17021","tag-iso-9001","tag-john-allin","tag-smithers","tag-sn9001","tag-snow","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3876,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782\/revisions\/3876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}