Quality Certification

As the main infrastructure of the Marine Research Center and the University of Vigo, ECIMAT has as one of its primary missions the provision of research services. For this reason, and in order to ensure their effectiveness and the availability of all necessary resources for their proper delivery, it adopted the strategic objective of implementing a quality management system based on the requirements of the international ISO 9001 standard, which has been certified by independent entities since 2013.

Years after the initial certification, we continue to work within a user-oriented system, with a clear service-driven approach, in which objectives are periodically defined as a tool to ensure our commitment to continuous improvement. All of this revolves around three core principles on which our Quality Policy is based:

• Excellence, to always pursue the highest and most up-to-date scientific standards both in the execution of the requested work and in its preparation and design.
• Quality, to consistently promote the technical quality of our work through proper equipment maintenance and continuous staff training.
• Proximity, to address users’ needs through active and continuous communication, and to ensure ongoing monitoring of their satisfaction with the organization’s performance.

In order to consolidate this positioning, the Directorate made the strategic decision to certify the implementation of the requirements of the ISO 9001:2015 standard in the following activities:

• Use of infrastructure for marine research.
• Breeding and supply of marine species.
• Support for research activities in the marine environment.
• Environmental sampling in the marine environment.
• Determination of physicochemical parameters of water in the field and in the laboratory.
• Bioassays for the ecotoxicological characterization of environmental samples and chemical substances.
• Histological processing of tissue samples from aquatic organisms.