SQAS background

The chemical industry in Europe uses mainly the logistical services of third parties for handling, storage and transport of raw materials and end products. The chemical companies want to assure themselves that these tasks are carried out in a safe and qualitatively high-minded manner.  Thus to ensrue the protection of their employees, the outside world and the environment. In the past individual chemical companies carried out periodic audits at their suppliers of logistical services. This has led to a fragmented treatment with a multiple of questionnaires. This appeared expensive and inefficient both for the chemical and for the transport industry.

For this reason Cefic in 1990, have set up, within the framework of its Responsible Care policy, the ICE programme, which to aim put himself to raise the security at the transport, the storage and handling of chemical substances. An important aspect of this ICE programme the development of a safety quality evaluation system (SQAS) for each transport manner and logistical service ( road, intermodal, reinigingstations, packed sea transport, bulk sea transport, bulk storage and handling inland

SQAS is a tool to evaluate managementsystems, with respect to quality, safety, security and environment of the suppliers of logistical services in an uniform manner by means of a standardized questionnaire.  this avoids the chemical companies to do their individual audits °. Thereby the SQAS report help the chemical companies in their choice of logistical company, as well as at the drawing up of improvement programmes. ....

The SQAS assessment by an independent assessor doesnot result in a certificate, but a detailed objective factual report that by each chemical company can reviewed against its requirements. The research replaces the multiple inspections to which a supplier of logistical services had been exposed traditionally, without giving up the dialog between both parties however.

Although SQAS on itself does not ensure the safety and quality of the provided service, the system introduces a a mechanism to evaluate ongoing improvement. The system provides useful feedback to the service provider concerning the observed strong and weak points during the assessment. As a result, the individual chemical company can, after evaluation of the results which are stored in a shared database and available for user-group provide members, customer-oriented feedback to lay and/or reinforce thereby the foundation of a durable cooperation which advantage produces for both parties.

The assessment takes place once by 3 years. The report is placed in the database of Cefic and is accessible for the assesed company as well as the Cefic user group members. Participating committing receives no certificate but however a declaration of participation to the SQAS diagram. If organisation desire to increase their score, this is possible by executing intermediate assessements. The organisations can choose the subjects to be re-assessed. The assessor determines the required time. Intermediate assessemnts must be caried out by the same auditor. The original expiry date remains valid.

The time spending will be determined based on the Pre Assessment Document information. This PAD indicates a minimum spend from which the assessor can deviate based on experience and volume of the activities. In general one should keep in mind that per assessment (1 module) 2 assessment days will be required.

This time spending applies by location. Every location must be assesed entirely (complete assessment' unless establishments lay within 5 kilometres of each other. New is that satellite locations can be assessed within one month after the head office, with reduced time. Satellites are, in transport for instance sites that comply to following: The management system is centrally maintained, HRM-affairs are dealt with centrally, suppliers are selected centrally.

At present L.O.A.C. can be examined the following SQAS  schemes:

•SQAS Core element/core elements
•SQAS transport services/road transport, intermodal, terminal services, forwarding
•SQAS Cleaning stations
•SQAS Warehouse
•SQAS rail/railway companies 
•ESAD-II/SQAS Distributer, the essential part and the location-specific part (including module Chlorinated Solvents & module Food, Pharma &, Cosmetics (GMP))

Companies that are involved in food, food contact or feed transport can also be assessed against the GMP criteria that are now included in the questionnaires.