There is a recent trend amongst oil companies or oil field construction companies to leave Quality Control (QC) to the survey subcontractor. Increasingly they do not put their own survey QC representative on survey vessels they hire. This may be a mistake, although at this point the author, being himself an offshore QC representative, must confess to a vested interest.

Quality assurance is a term which is often misunderstood. Even people who use the expression are vague about what it actually means in any given industry or how it should be applied in any particular situation. The confusion is compounded because the quality assurance ‘bible’ (BS5750/lSO 9001 documentation), was written primarily for the manufacturing industry, and needs expert translation to apply to a service industry such as the commercial marine survey business.