Credentials & Accreditations

Our certification, our credentials, and the bodies behind the standards

AQM holds an active ISO 9001:2015 certification. Our consultants carry named, verifiable credentials with major third-party bodies. Every standard we help clients certify against is governed by an accreditation system you can independently verify — the bodies behind them are listed below.

View Our ISO 9001 Certificate Talk to Connie Smith
ISO 9001:2015 Certified · Cert No. 1118558 · 25+ Years of QM Experience
ISO 9001:2015 No. 1118558
Pillar 6 — We pass our own audits

AQM has held continuous ISO 9001:2015 certification since 2018. Our certificate number is 1118558. The full PDF is available below; it documents the scope of our certification, the certifying body, the date of issue, and the date of next surveillance audit.

We don’t keep this certification because clients ask us to. We keep it because we believe a consulting firm that helps clients build quality management systems should run one itself — and should subject it to the same kind of third-party scrutiny we coach our clients through.

Certificate Number
1118558
Certifying Body
IAPMO SCB (ANAB-accredited Management Systems Certification Body)
Certified Scope
Quality Management Systems Support, Maintenance and Project Management for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical and Commercial Entities
Current Cycle
Issue: 05/03/2023 · Re-issue: 07/15/2024 · Expiry: 05/02/2026
View Full Certificate (PDF)

Pillar 5 — Verified Roster

The people behind the work, with credentials you can verify

Every AQM engagement is led by a named consultant whose credentials live publicly — on LinkedIn, on registrar rosters, and at the academic institutions that issued them. This page is the index. The named-consultant bios live on the About page.

Connie Smith

Founder, Owner & Principal
DNV Lead Auditor (2011–Present) MSQA (CSU Dominguez Hills) BS Business Admin (U of Phoenix)
Auditing Track Record: Active Lead Auditor at DNV conducting official third-party assessments since 2011 (15+ years of active field service).
Academic Mastery: Master of Science in Quality Assurance (MSQA) from CSU Dominguez Hills.
Operational Focus: Comprehensive AS9100, ISO 9001, and Nadcap supply-chain quality engineering.

I specialize in aligning quality architectures to survive the industry’s most challenging inspection cycles. My Lead Auditor role at DNV gives me an active, inside view of the exact registrar standards our clients face, ensuring we build compliance that naturally integrates with your existing shop floor workflows.

Read Connie’s full bio on the About page

The System Behind the Standards

The standards we consult on are governed by these bodies

AQM is a consultancy, not an accreditation body or a certifying registrar — the bodies below are the independent organizations that publish, govern, and accredit the standards we help our clients certify against. Knowing who they are matters; the credibility of a certification is only as strong as the body behind it.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

Publishes the ISO 9001 (quality), ISO 14001 (environmental), ISO 13485 (medical devices) standards AQM consults on, among hundreds of others.

Verify at iso.org

International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG)

Industry body responsible for the AS9100, AS9110, and AS9120 family of aerospace quality standards. AQM’s three aerospace service pages all consult against IAQG-governed standards.

Verify at iaqg.org

Performance Review Institute (PRI) / Nadcap

Administers the Nadcap (National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program) special-process accreditation, used by primes and OEMs to qualify their supply chain.

Verify at p-r-i.org

International Accreditation Forum (IAF)

Worldwide association of accreditation bodies. Sets the framework that lets an ISO 9001 certificate issued in one country be recognized in another.

Verify at iaf.nu

ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB)

Primary US accreditation body for management system certification bodies. Accredits the registrars who in turn certify companies to ISO 9001, AS9100, ISO 13485, and ISO 14001.

Verify at anab.ansi.org

DNV

Major global certification body. Connie Smith holds an active DNV Lead Auditor credential (Pillar 5 above) and regularly conducts third-party registrar audits.

Verify at dnv.com

Why this page exists

Most consulting websites don’t publish a page like this. We do, because it’s the page a careful quality manager would write if they were vetting us. If a consultant tells you they’re “certified” or “credentialed,” you should be able to verify that statement in a minute or less without picking up the phone. The credentials above link to the bodies that issued them. The certificate above is the actual PDF. Connie Smith has a public LinkedIn profile with a fifteen-year DNV history that anyone can read.

If you find something on this page you can’t verify, or a body link that has moved, email info@aqmauditing.com and we’ll fix it within one business day.

Questions about a specific credential or accreditation?

Call (323) 896-1803 or email Connie Smith directly to discuss your standards roadmap and verification needs.

Contact AQM
Contact AQM