Dubai central lab honoured

The Dubai Central Laboratory has become the first department at Dubai Municipality to receive the ISO 9002 certificate for quality.

Director-General Qassim Sul-tan said the civic body started in 1999 implementing a strategic plan to apply quality systems in a methodical and organised way in all the organisational units in order to obtain the quality certificates and excellence according to international standards and specifications.

He said the municipality has been keen on obtaining the certificates on quality through evaluating this system by an independent external body like the organisations which confer the ISO 9000 and ISO 14001 certificates.

"That is how we turned to organisations approved by their countries for conferring certificates on quality systems so that the certificates issued by these organisations would be registered with the approved bodies," said Sultan.

He said the Department of Administrative Development and Quality had been coordinating with all the organisational units for enhancing the quality system by compiling the work and procedures and following the most modern international standards and specifications in this field such as ISO 9000 and ISO 14001.

As part of the first phase of applying a strategic plan, a project for developing the quality system in the administration of Dubai Central Laboratory was initiated in June 1999, he said.

"The whole department was fully engaged in achieving this target by activating all the administrative units in the department throughout the different stages of the project. Working groups were also formed to oversee the implementation of the project," said Sultan.

In order to get the quality system evaluated by an independent external body, the municipality, in June 2000, commissioned a company which was approved by the United Kingdom Accreditation Services (UKAS) laboratory and 14 other government authorities in the world.

After getting the ISO 9002 certificate, the Central Laboratory is further developing the quality system in order to comply with the requirements for "ISO 9001:2000" and the technical requirements for "ISO 17025" and also for getting the "ISO Guide 65" certificate given to products.