Hi Brian,

I went through this with two different fabricators. I was fortunate enough to help write the procedures, I got to follow the auditors around, and attended the exit meetings. If you haven't already, get the Quality Certification Kit from the AISC. Included in the kit is the Standard for Steel Building Structures, which in pretty much chronological order covers everything from contract documents to the delivery of the finished product. It also has the Quality Manual Guideline, which is a follow up to the Building Standard. It references each item in the Standard, and offers concepts, interpretations, tips, and quality record examples for them. Also, you will get a copy of the Quality Certification Inspection Evaluation Checklist, based on which category of certification you're applying for. This is the actual audit that will be performed by AISC personnel. On the audit, there are what are regarded as "essential" items, "critical" items, and "non-essential" items. As it states in the Category II Evaluation Checklist, every "essential" item must get a satisfactory score. All but twenty percent of the "critical" items (one if there are less than five critical items in a department) must get a satisfactory score. All but thirty percent of the items that are neither "critical" nor "essential" (three if there are less than ten such items in a department) must get a satisfactory score.
I suggest that you write your procedures based on the actual audit. You don't really need a procedure to cover every single question on the audit. You definitely need procedures to cover the "essential" items, and although you're allowed a percentage of "critical" items, I recommend procedures for them as well. I don't recommend writing procedures for everything else, but you need to make sure that you have the satisfactory percentage covered.
The first time I went through this, was in 1980. We got the kit, wrote all the procedures, did an internal audit, and hired an AISC "consultant" to come in and audit us prior to the actual audit. It was money well spent. He advised us as to whether we needed additional procedures, could do away with some of the ones we had written, etc. The thing to remember when writing your procedures, is that all you really need to do is to satisfy the audit. To me, anything beyond that is absolute overkill. I've seen a lot of AISC Procedure Manuals over the years, and I've seen unnecessary procedures, causing the fabricator to become bogged down with extra paperwork, which in addition causes extra and unnecessary physical work as well. Remember too that anything you write into law has to be followed to the letter, and that it is highly critical to tightly intertwine each related procedure. It is also critical that you leave clean, and totally accurate paper trails. The auditors seem to have a knack for finding these obscure little things that sometimes ordinarily fall through the cracks, and they are able to trace them back to another procedure that hasn't been tied together.
Good luck to you on your certification.

We are not certified yet although we have prepared most all the documents and are now implementing what the procedures say so we can show that we "do what we say and say what we do". As stated above the AISC website has all the documents and the Standard available for downloading, including sample procedures (that WILL require modification to suit your company). An engineer and I attended and QMC Boot Camp last year in Orlando and the seminar is highly recommended. Not boring and well presented by Ms. Anna Petroski (formerly associated with AWS) and Mr. Terry Logan (WILL keep your attention - funny guy). They make a good team and you will get something out of the seminar. They outline what is "fluff" and what is critical as they go through the Standard word by word.