Background

ISO/TS 29001 First edition was published on September 15, 2003, see ISO Press Release for details. ISO/TS 29001:2003 was prepared to provide supplemental requirements to ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management Systems – Requirements and, accordingly, includes the original text of ISO 9001:2000 unaltered and in its entirety as boxed text, while the supplemental requirements are outside the boxes.

ISO/TS 29001:2003 was prepared in cooperation with the American Petroleum Institute in a joint working group between ISO/TC67/WG2 with liaison from ISO/TC176/SC2, and the API SC18 Q1 Task Force. The original text of ISO/TS 29001:2003 unaltered and in its entirety has been adopted as the Quality Management System (QMS) within API Spec Q1 Seventh edition, June 15, 2003, Effective date December 15, 2003. API Spec Q1 also includes, as Annex A, the provisions for the API Monogram Program; this Program is proprietary to API and is not included in ISO/TS 29001:2003.

The questions and issues addressed here have arisen from various parts of the industry and the responses have been developed based on the best information available to the Management Committee (MC) of ISO/TC67 Materials, equipment and offshore structures for petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas industries, and have been endorsed by the TC67 MC for distribution to its members for information.

A brief discussion of the "infrastructure" relevant to ISO 9001 may help to clarify some of the terms and the issues relevant to ISO/TS 29001:

1 - If a Certification Body (CB) claims that it is competent to certify according ISO 9001 it can issue the certificates to any interested organization;
2 - If the CB is accredited by a National Accreditation Body (NAB) as an Accredited Certification Body (ACB) and as competent to certify according to ISO 9001 the certificate can show the NAB logo;
3 - If the NAB takes part in the Multilateral Recognition Agreement (MRA) of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) it can readily be recognized by another NAB (inside IAF/MRA). In this case the certificates issued by the ACB can show the logo of the other NAB as well. So, a certificate can be issued in one country and exhibit the logo of the NAB of another country. This ensures that the certificate is "recognised" within that other country. This rule is intended to minimize multi-accreditation by the ACBs and reduce the costs of certification.

The "infrastructure" implied by [2] and [3] above is neither in place nor currently planned with respect to ISO/TS 29001.
Note that the term Registrar is sometimes used; the definition is the same as for Certification Body.

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