CHARLOTTE – Two management systems used by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (Auxiliary Services Department) have received an internationally recognized certification of excellence. The district’s Building Services and Capital Program Services management systems received ISO 9001 certification in May from North American registrar QMI-SAI Global.

ISO 9001 is a set of international quality standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization, which represents some 130 countries around the world.

“We are pleased to achieve this milestone in continuous improvement,” said Guy Chamberlain, the district’s associate superintendent for auxiliary services.

“At first, people sometimes find ISO 9001 intimidating,” said Kathryn Block, director of process quality for auxiliary services. “But it’s really not complicated. It’s basically a process to get our employees to write down what they do; do what they write down; provide visible evidence that they are doing what they wrote down; identify errors in their processes and correct them; and proactively identify and pursue opportunities for process improvement.”

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is the largest of only a handful of districts in the U.S. pursuing broad-scale registration to ISO 9001, Chamberlain said.