The Province of Ontario issued a management system standard (Ontario DWQMS) a short while ago that applies to public drinking water systems. The standard is a cross between ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 in many respects. The standard can be found at the following link.

Ontario Drinking Water Quality Management Standard.pdf (http://www.ontario.ca/drinkingwater/160421.pdf)

As part of the Provincial licensing of public drinking water systems, municipalities/utilities must produce an operational plan (as outlined in the DWQMS) and third party auditing/approval of the plan/management system is required.

The Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) has been authorized by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to conduct the third party auditing/accreditation of management systems/operational plans/operating authorities.

As I understand it, this is the first initiative of it's kind in the world. The requirement for a DWQMS resulted from the inquiry into the Walkerton, Ontario tainted water tragedy in 2000.

Forward-looking government activity! :applause:

Stijloor.

Kudos to Ontario for creating this (although it was a recommendation following the Walkerton tragedy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_Tragedy)).
At least having published a standard, they're not following ISO by charging people to access it.

Kudos to Ontario for creating this (although it was a recommendation following the Walkerton tragedy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_Tragedy)).
At least having published a standard, they're not following ISO by charging people to access it.

We may not have to pay to access the standard - but we DO have to pay to be accredited by the CGSB - and I'd MUCH rather pay an ISO auditor than the CGSB! My mouth dropped when I saw the fees we are being charged compared to what we paid at the private company I worked at previously that was ISO 9001:2000 registered. At least with ISO registration, you can choose your registrar - with the DWQMS, we have to use the MOE authorized accreditation body.

Lots of frustration amongst the municipalities at this point, as the CGSB was very slow coming off the mark (didn't hire enough personnel to prepare for over 300 municipalities requiring accreditation!) - and because the DWQMS is so new, even the CGSB and the MOE, from what I'm hearing from my colleagues, isn't really "up" on interpreting the Standard. I submitted my municipalities Operational Plan and supporting procedures for the desktop limited scope audit on May 1st - and haven't heard one peep from the CGSB!! Oh well - the longer it takes for them to get back to me, the longer I have for implementation before the on-site accreditation audit!

Hopefully these are just growing pains and the DWQMS evolves into what it intended to do!

Hardest part right now is getting "Top Management" to "buy in" to the quality side - especially since it is a legislated requirement to have the QMS in place that meets the requirements of the DWQMS - so they view as yet another thing we HAVE to do because the province says so...

By the way, I question their auditing approach in this thread:
http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=34665

Darlene