Operational Quality Management

Quality management (QM) is a vital part of most industries. It  not only focuses on the end product (in demining this is ‘safe cleared land’ ref: IMAS 04.10) but also the process  to achieve the final product.  

The aim of QM in the survey and clearance of areas contaminated by mine and unexploded ordnance (UXO), is to provide the beneficiaries, the demining organisation and the national authority with confidence that the land is released in accordance to the agreed standard. The aim is also to ensure safety for the operators while working, and assurance that any released land is indeed safe to use. QM is comprised of quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC), and the intention is to achieve consistent quality throughout the entire operation. 

Quality assurance (QA) is conducted by assessing that the process is being followed.
Quality control (QC) is conducted by physically checking the finished product.

The purpose of QA is to confirm that management practices and operational procedures are appropriate, are being applied correctly, and will achieve the stated requirements safely and efficiently. Internal QA is conducted by the survey and clearance organisations, while external inspections are undertaken by national mine action authorities or other contracted agencies.

QA includes:

• Organisational and Operational accreditation of the clearance organisation and assets
• Monitoring of survey and clearance teams during operations to ensure that the agreed procedures are followed
• Assuring that equipment is functioning properly and is being operated as per the agreed standard  
• Assuring that mechanical and animal assets, if used, are performing in the way they were designed/trained to perform and in accordance with the set standards
• Review of documentation to ensure that records are maintained as per agreement

QC relates to the inspection of a finished product, which in demining, normally involves the inspection of a proportion (percentage) of cleared land, to validate that the work has been achieved to the agreed standard. External QC takes place when a task has been completed, and is conducted through sampling. Internal QC takes place while conducting a task. QC is only conducted on the finished product (safe cleared land) and therefore practically can only be conducted on land that has had a clearance asset applied to it. The quality of land released through non-technical survey (NTS) and technical survey (TS) is normally assured by the QA of the process.

Internal QC is conducted by survey and clearance organisations, while external inspections are undertaken by national mine action authorities or other contracted agencies. External sampling, in particular, is a costly way of ensuring quality, and should be kept to a minimum. By developing a well-functioning internal and external QA process, the need for sampling can be reduced, or removed entirely from the QM process.

An efficient QM system focuses on internal and external QA, and applies limited external QC only where required (eg, areas worked by demining teams with a history of poor performance). Internal QC should occur more frequently.

Survey and completion documentation should be subjected to QA checks. All documentation relating  to a task should be subjected to QA, to ensure that the relevant information has been gathered, and that the mapping of the surveyed and cleared areas is shown accurately and in enough detail.

The GICHD provide advice and training in operational QM on a request basis.

Further information on QM of survey and clearance operations :

IMAS

• IMAS 04.10 Glossary
• IMAS 07.30 Accreditation of demining organizations and operations
• IMAS 07.40 Monitoring of demining organizations
• IMAS 07.41 Monitoring of MRE
• IMAS 07.42 Monitoring of stockpile destruction
• IMAS 09.20 The inspection of cleared land: guidelines for the use of sampling procedures
• IMAS 09.42 Operational testing of mine detection dogs and handlers

These documents can be found on the IMAS page of the International Mine Action Standards website

CEN Workshop Agreement

• CWA 14747 Humanitarian Mine Action - Test and evaluation – Metal Detectors
• CWA 15044 Test and evaluation of demining machines

• Part 1: The effect of soil condition on measurements of ground penetration depth and machine performance
• Part 2: Interpretation of ground penetration depth measurements
• Part 3: Measuring soil compaction and soil moisture content of areas for testing of mechanical demining equipment
• Part 4: Statistical methods used to calculate demining machine performance, performance confidence intervals and performance differences (under review)

• CWA 15833 Humanitarian mine action - Quality management – Quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) for mechanical demining

These documents can be found on the CWA page of the International Mine Action Standards website

Accreditation of mechanical assets

To evaluate the ground penetration depth of a machine, fibreboards may be put into the ground, across the clearance path of the machine. After the machine has  processed the ground, the fibreboards are taken out and inspected.