Herick Lopez

Managing Director, Bureau of Quality Surveillance, Inc., The Woodlands, TX, USA

Herick Lopez has carried out ISO 9001 certification audits since 1997 on behalf of several International Certification Bodies such as TUV from Germany, AFNOR from France, API from the USA, and DQS from Germany.

Herick Lopez has auditing experience in a wide variety of industries with specific international qualifications as automotive lead auditor, and IRIS Railway Lead Auditor along more than 300 audits in the Oil & Gas Industry.

Herick has been recently (Sept 2022) designated secretary of the Auditing Practice Group within ISO/TC 176, which is responsible for creating and updating guidelines for auditing ISO 9001.

Herick Lopez has been published by the American Society for Quality on his article on auditing virtual environments. API is a Senior Auditor for the American Petroleum Institute, and full voting member of the Subcommittee 18 carrying out the processes of creating quality specifications for the Oil & Gas Industry, and managing API Certification Audits to companies in Mexico, United States, Canada, Trinidad & Tobago, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, UK, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates, Spain, France and other countries.Besides his work as lead auditor, Mr. Herick Lopez is a member of Task Group 02 of Subcommittee 18 of the American Petroleum Institute commissioned to write API Specification Q1 concerning Management Systems for Petroleum Equipment Manufacturers. This task is a volunteer group to support the development of technical specifications for the oil industry and natural gas in the United States.

Also participates in the development of the audit processes of the new standard API Specification Q2 regarding Quality Management Systems Enterprise Services Sector Exploration, Drilling and Production in the Oil and Natural Gas. For this new specification, Herick López became one of the auditors selected to perform the first Beta assessments of this new specification.In the new age of exploration and production of oil in Deep Waters, he has been appointed by the American Petroleum Institute as an authorized Lead Assesor in the world to audit on behalf of the Center of Offshore Safety -COS.

Certification Bodies for Safety and Environmental Management Systems of Deepwater Offshore Operations in the Gulf of Mexico shall be assessed by the COS.Herick Lopez is a Mechanical and Metallurgic Engineer and holds a Master of Business Leadership. Herick Lopez lives with his family in The Woodlands, Texas, USA

Auditing Competence, Business Perspective and ISO/TC 176 APG Supporting Papers

Competence is one of the sustaining values of an organization. In the context of the quality management system, competence shapes the design of responsibilities, the extent of documentation, the relationship with service providers, and the efficiency of the business to be competitive. When auditing ISO 9001, auditors must keep in mind that competence is embedded in each process at all levels of the organization, and it is our responsibility to understand that the design of competencies obeys to business needs.

The auditor must be interested in understanding the business and its competency needs. ISO/TC 176 Auditing Practice group issued a paper on auditing competence, which will be described and explained on each section. This presentation was also provided at the CQI IRCA “Future of Auditing” 2022 event.

This presentation will provide awareness on how to use ISO/TC 176 APG resources for the auditing activity.

This particular paper touches on each section that refers to competence highlighting the main expectations on each section. Additionally, the presentation will provide guidelines on how to obtain evidence of competence as well as the main challenges currently happening in the auditing world.

The presenter is also an accreditation assessor, therefore this presentation will also contain these challenges that auditors are facing while auditing. Additionally, the aspect of auditor competence is brought up, as well as the supporting resources of the ISO /TC 176 APG group published in the ISO website.