If all goes well, the Coimbatore International Airport and the Coimbatore Railway Junction are likely to clear the Integrated Management System quality annual surveillance audit, thereby keeping quality certification alive for one more year.

Coimbatore Airport and Coimbatore Junction had an year ago bagged the IMS certification. The certification included ISO 9001 for Quality Management, ISO 14001 for Environmental management and OSHAS 18001 for Health and Safety Standards. The airport and railway station were examined for the purpose of certification by Quest Certification Private limited on behalf of the certifying body JAS - ANZ, an Australian agency.

The certification is valid till 2020 but subject to conformity to the conditions and norms levied during the certification. Every year, the airport and railway junction will be subjected to an annual surveillance audit for compliance and conformity to norms failing which, the certification will stand cancelled. Quest Certification, led by its lead auditor B. Karthikeyan, carried out the surveillance audit at the airport two days ago wherein they checked all parameters, including friction levels on the rubber way, rubber accumulation besides passenger amenities and passenger-friendly initiatives.

The agency was reportedly satisfied with the compliance levels and measures initiated to sustain the standards maintained at the time of certification and very soon it would get a green signal for the certification valid for one more year. The audit team led by Mr. Karthikeyan commenced the audit of 16 sections of Coimbatore Railway Junction in the presence of station director P. Sathish Saravanan on Wednesday, which got over on Thursday.

Interestingly, Coimbatore is the only junction to have obtained the certification in the entire Southern Railway.

Mr. Karthikeyan said that the purpose of annual surveillance audit is to ensure that there is no slackness or complacency during the post-audit period leading to fall in standards or quality. The objective is to ensure that standards set for the certification for sustained and further improvements are made. The audit sprawled over 16 broad areas, including passenger amenities, cleanliness, ticket vending and so on. At the end of the audit, the agency will offer suggestions and recommendations for further improvement to scale up the performance. In fact, the Coimbatore Junction seems to have lived up to the expectations on all parameters and some suggestions have been made for improving the parcel booking to prevent slide in revenue generation.

However, both the airport and the railway station seem to have by and large cleared the annual surveillance audit and the agency is likely to recommend the continuance of the certification for a further period of one year.