National Standards Authority Of Ireland

The European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic)

Safety and Quality Assessment Systems (SQAS)

NSAI offer an inspection service to the above industry scheme. Typically major users of such dangerous good require evidence that their supplies are transported to industry best practice as set out by Cefic rules and guidelines. See www.sqas.org.

NSAI are registered to carry out Cefic inspections. Approved companies are registered by NSAI on the Cefic web site.

The chemical industry in Europe utilises to a large extent the logistic services offered by third parties to store, handle and transport raw materials, intermediates and finished chemical products. Chemical companies need assurance that these operations are carried out in a safe, quality manner with due regard for the protection of employees, the public and the environment. In the past this assurance has often been obtained by individual chemical companies undertaking periodic audits of their logistic service providers, leading to a fragmented approach and a multiplicity of auditing programmes which was costly and inefficient for both the chemical and transport industry.

Within the framework of Responsible Care, Cefic launched in the early 1990’s the IC programme aiming at improving the safety performance during the transport, storage and handling of chemicals. A key element of the ICE programme was the development of a number of Safety and Quality Assessment Systems (SQAS), each related to a particular transport mode or logistic operation (road, rail, intermodal, cleaning stations, marine packed cargo, bulk marine, storage terminals and barges). SQAS provides a tool to assess the quality, safety and environmental management systems of logistic service providers in a uniform manner by independent assessors using a standardized questionnaire thereby avoiding multiple assessments by individual chemical companies.

SQAS helps chemical companies in the process of selecting logistic service providers and in defining improvement actions with each of them.

An SQAS assessment by an independent body does not lead to a certificate but results in a detailed factual report, which each individual chemical company needs to evaluate according to its own requirements. One single assessment replaces the myriad of inspections to which the logistics service providers have traditionally been subjected, without however making the dialogue between service provider and chemical company redundant.

Although SQAS does not guarantee the safety and quality of the service provided by a supplier, it does offer a mechanism to evaluate continuous improvement. The system provides useful feedback directly to the supplier on the strengths and weaknesses observed during the assessment. In addition, after the evaluation of the assessment results by the chemical company, customer specific feedback can be provided, thus creating and/or strengthening the foundation for a true partnership that is of mutual benefit.

In the current version of SQAS Transport Service 2006, the current European transport industry reality is that most transport companies use a mixture of own and subcontracted drivers and equipment, and offer a complexity of intermodal and logistics services.

The current revision of March 2006 was carried out by a Review Panel comprised of representatives from chemical companies, certification bodies and transport companies and attempts to capture and represent in a modular way, all key risk and control issues, relevant to all types of these Transport Service providers.

For further information please contact Mr Denis Lockhart by email or Ms Phil Cornwall on (01) 807 3903.

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