Advance Welding Blog

Nadcap Re-accreditation During a Pandemic

Written by Chris Kielb | Jul 27, 2020 7:17:52 PM

 

 

Becoming Nadcap re-accredited in 2020 has proven to be a challenge in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Our original audit, scheduled in March, had to be rescheduled.  Our company was deemed essential because of the aerospace and military work we do.  Management’s main goal was to keep our employees healthy and limit visitors into our facility.

Many company protocols were changed: shipping/receiving areas were changed, the front door was locked with instructions to call the front desk for entry or further directions, increased cleaning of highly touched areas, all employees to wear masks, etc.

Our audit was rescheduled to May and then again rescheduled to June.  Luckily, the PRI (the governing body of Nadcap) scheduling department was very flexible and understanding.  Needless to say, we were well prepared for our 4-day audit since our audit prep started in January!  Our audit prep includes: review of all required audit criteria checklists (AC7110, AC7110/1, AC7110/4, AC7110/4S, AC7110/5, AC7110/5S, AC7110/12, and AC7110/12S), review of past NCR’s, calibrations, welder qualifications, training records and job audit preparation.

The Nadcap in-depth critical process audit (of stringent industry consensus standards) was successfully completed with the following results:

-Zero Non-conformances (we’re so proud of our team!)

-24-month merit (we’ve achieved merit with every audit since 2009)

-Re-accreditation with an 8/31/2022 expiration

Advance Welding’s management team and employees realize the extraordinary expectations of our aerospace and military customers and work every day to produce the high quality product they expect.  Although our next audit is in 24 months, we will continually improve and monitor our processes.  Complying with the Nadcap, Aerospace, NAVSEA, Military and other industry quality guidelines and exceeding the expectations of our customers are the main goals of Advance  Welding.