NQA-1
Eighteen prescriptive requirements, no certificate to buy, and a customer audit that starts with the records your floor made last quarter.
NQA-1 is ASME's quality assurance standard for nuclear facility applications. Its first part sets eighteen requirements mirroring the criteria of 10 CFR 50 Appendix B, from organization and design control through records and audits, and it supplies the commercial grade dedication process for using commercial items in safety-related service.
Quality assurance requirements for nuclear facilities, implementing the eighteen criteria of 10 CFR 50 Appendix B, including item identification and records management.
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
Structures, systems, components, activities, and organizations essential to the safe and reliable performance of a nuclear facility, across the full lifecycle from design through decommissioning. In practice that covers advanced reactor and small modular reactor programs, operating plants, fuel fabrication, and waste storage, flowed down to every tier of supply.
There is no NQA-1 certificate and no registrar scheme. You write a quality assurance program to the standard, implement it, and the purchaser audits it before placing you on their approved supplier list, then reaudits on a surveillance interval. A third party can assess you, but the purchaser's acceptance is the thing that counts.
Suppliers of safety-related items and services to nuclear facilities, flowed down contractually through procurement documents.
| Requirement | Module | What It Does |
|---|---|---|
| Identification and control of materials, parts, and components | Inventory | Identity has to follow the item rather than depend on a tag staying attached. Receiving records the lot with its certification, issues to a job keep the link, and completions assign serials, so a delivered safety-related item resolves backward to the heat it came from and forward to the shipment it left on. Physical marking on the part is still your procedure, and the audit will check the marking against the record rather than taking either on its own. What the database gives you is the half that does not wear off, get painted over, or end up on the wrong basket. |
| Inspection, test, and operating status | Quality | Inventory carries hold states, so material awaiting disposition is not available to issue, and inspection results are recorded against the operation with attribution and a timestamp. Inspection templates define what gets verified and AQL sampling plans set the basis for how many pieces. An auditor can see the status of an item without reading a tag off a shelf. |
| Nonconforming items and corrective action | Quality | A failed inspection raises a nonconformance classified by severity, with the disposition recorded against the job and lot that produced it. Where the cause is systemic, an 8-D corrective action records containment, root cause, implemented action, and verification. The two requirements an NQA-1 audit always samples are joined to the work instead of living in separate logs. What the system will not do is decide a disposition for you or sign it; use as is and repair both need an engineering evaluation and an approval that WorkCell has no place to record. |
| Instructions and drawings at the work station | Production | Routings define the operations and the sequence, and the shop floor terminal shows the operator the operation they are clocked on to while capturing quantities, scrap, time, and results. The controlled procedure and the issued drawing still come from your document system, because document control and electronic signature are not built in WorkCell. |
| Design configuration of the delivered item | Engineering | Multi-level bills of material and routings are versioned with effective dating and a new revision supersedes rather than overwrites, so an item delivered two years ago still reports the configuration it was built to. This is revision control, not design control in the NQA-1 sense: design input review, verification, and approval routing are not in the system. |
| Control of purchased material, equipment, and services | Purchasing | The supplier catalog holds which vendor is approved for which item or process, purchase orders are written against it, and receiving ties the lot back to the order. For a commercial grade dedication, the critical characteristics can be set up as an inspection template so the verification results are recorded rather than attested. Supplier audit scheduling is not built. |
Every purchaser audit opens with the program document, the procedures it invokes, and evidence that the revision in use at the work station is the current one. WorkCell holds none of this. Document control, revision approval, and electronic signatures are not built, so the program manual and its procedure set stay in whatever controlled system you keep them in today.
The auditor picks a delivered item and asks for the whole chain: the procurement document it was bought against, the material certification, the operations it passed through, who performed and who verified each one, the inspections, and the shipping record. Lot and serial genealogy answers most of that as a query rather than as a week of pulling folders. The part it does not answer is the verification signature, since electronic signatures are not built, so the hold points and independent verification records your program promises still come from signed paper or your document system.
For each commercial item accepted into safety-related service, expect to produce the critical characteristics you identified, the technical basis for choosing them, the verification method for each, and the results. Recording the verification as an inspection against the receipt gets you the results and the attribution. The engineering evaluation that selected the characteristics is written work the system does not do, and it is the part purchasers reject most often. A dedication built on characteristics nobody can tie to the safety function fails on the technical basis long before anyone checks whether the measurements were taken.
Any recorded measurement invites a question about the instrument that took it and whether it was in calibration on that date. WorkCell does not manage gage calibration, recall intervals, or out-of-tolerance impact assessment. That is a named gap, and it matters more here than in most standards because an expired gage can invalidate every measurement taken with it.
NQA-1 separates lifetime records from non-permanent ones and the purchaser specifies which applies. WorkCell keeps the transactional record with role-based permissions and tenant isolation, and exposes a REST API for extraction, but a protected archive meeting the standard's storage and retention provisions is a separate obligation you have to satisfy and describe in your program.
Can you get NQA-1 certified?
No. There is no NQA-1 certificate and no accredited registrar scheme behind it. You write a quality assurance program to the standard, implement it, and your customer audits it before putting you on their approved supplier list. Anyone selling you NQA-1 certification is selling something that does not exist.
What is commercial grade dedication?
The process for taking a commercially available item and accepting it for safety-related service without the supplier having an NQA-1 program. You identify the critical characteristics the safety function depends on, verify each one by a defined method, and you own the dedication record. The supplier is not dedicating anything.
How is NQA-1 different from ISO 9001?
NQA-1 is prescriptive where ISO 9001 is outcome-based. It tells you what the program must contain across eighteen requirements, it is invoked contractually through 10 CFR 50 Appendix B rather than by choice, and the verifying audit is run by your customer instead of a registrar you hire.
Does running WorkCell make us NQA-1 compliant?
No. No software can confer compliance here, and there is nothing to confer, since the program is yours and the audit is your customer's. WorkCell keeps item identity, inspection status, nonconformances, and corrective actions as the work happens. The program, the procedures, and the audit response remain yours.
Which NQA-1 requirements does WorkCell not cover?
Document control, electronic signatures, training and indoctrination records, measuring and test equipment calibration, internal audit management, and a records archive with the required storage protection are not built. Design control is versioning and effective dating, not a design review with routed approvals. Those requirements stay in your existing program.
How long do we have to keep NQA-1 records?
Your procurement documents set it. The standard separates lifetime records, kept for the life of the item or the facility, from non-permanent records with a stated shorter retention, and the purchaser specifies which is which. WorkCell holds the transactional record; a protected lifetime archive is separate.
Keep the records as the work happens.
Tell us what your last purchaser audit asked for and we will tell you straight which of those records WorkCell would hold and which ones stay in your program documents.