PROJECT PLANNING & IMPLEMENTATION DIVISION

Coal: Third-party sampling, testing and analysis of coal

Since, August’2017 when Quality Council of India (QCI) had commenced its operations, we have sailed through some major milestones in terms of third-party assessment of coal. QCI plays a vital role in grade assessment for mine grades. In addition to this, below are the updates for the second quarter of the current FY:

  1. QCI have crossed the 180 MMT of coal sampling till Sep’2020
  2. Extension in scope of work of linkage auction FSA for power sector which consumes more than 70% of CIL’s total production
  3. In September’20, QCI signed 5MMT in FSA linkage with Sembcorp Energy India Limited and GMR Energy Limited which are power consumers
  4. QCI has deployed nearly 170+ on-ground representatives with 25 people deployed at the central team to overlook entire operations

Currently, we are operational at 100% locations with more than 170 active coal consumers and sampling round the clock with limited resources in the market. Coal team has given utmost priority to the safety and preventive measures to be adopted in the project and a benign environment.
 

Plant End Projects

LANCO Anpara Power Limited - Sampling, testing and analysis of coal at thermal power plant

The process of sampling provides a transparent mechanism to analyse the quality of coal. QCI with its ability, willingness, expertise and infrastructure to undertake the job of coal quality testing is performing the sampling activity at LAPL plant since January’20. In this journey QCI has achieved several milestones such as:

  1.  A total volume of 28,10,000 MT of coal is sampled till date and around 225 samples have been collected since the commencement of work
  2. Out of 225 samples not even a single sample is challenged for referee examination
  3. QCI has deployed 5 on-ground representatives to maintain the transparency in entire operations

OCPL: Quality analysis of coal at mine end of Odisha Coal and Power Limited (OCPL)
QCI plays a huge role in coal assessment for mine grades in Odisha Coal and Power Limited. QCI is performing the sampling activity since March’20 and following are the milestones achieved while performing the same:

  1. A total volume of 6,96,000 MT of coal is sampled till September’2020
  2. QCI has deployed 4 on-ground representatives with 3 people deployed at the central team to overlook entire operations
  3. In September’2020, OCPL has extended our scope of work in order to perform the coal sampling in their stockyard

JSW: Quality and Quantity analysis of lignite fuel at JSW Energy Barmer

JSWBL has nominated QCI for Quality and Quantity analysis of coal at their plant end for 3 years in August,2020.  During the project, QCI is responsible for Quality analysis of lignite coal i.e. collection, preparation and analysis (Proximate, GCV, Sieve and Sulphur) and Quantity verification. In addition to this, below are the latest updates of the project:

  1. QCI has commenced its operations at JSW plant from 1st October 2020
  2. A total volume of 7,70,000 MT of coal is sampled till date
  3. Around 65 samples have been collected since the commencement of work

Food and Drug Administration Goa - Third-Party Testing of Fisheries to check the presence of Formaldehyde


QCI is checking trucks entering Goa’s state borders and in wholesale fish market. For this purpose, three teams were set up along with CIFT testing Laboratory at Goa North Border with Maharashtra (Patradevi), Goa South Border with Karnataka (Pollem) and in Margao wholesale fish market for incoming trucks carrying fish from Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. Since the commencement of work, QCI has attained several milestones such as:

  1. Around 38,900 trucks have been screened from which 22,000 samples are drawn till date for testing and analysis (for the presence of formaldehyde).
  2. To ensure transparency in the process, QCI has designed a mobile application/dashboard to capture real-time data for sample collection and testing.
     

Validation of Key Performance Indicators for District Hospital Ranking – NITI Aayog

The primary aim of the project was the onsite review and validation of Key Performance Indicators' (KPIs) input data provided by the District Hospitals on HMIS.

The KPIs were designed by NITI Aayog for assessing performance of District Hospitals. These KPIs were based on various data items of HMIS which is an online portal where district hospitals submit data on health indicators. NITI Aayog, as mandated by the Government, has created a framework for assessing the performance of district hospitals based on 16 KPIs.

QCI-NABH was on boarded by NITI Aayog for conducting an independent onsite review and validation of data items of the KPIs which are submitted by the district hospitals on HMIS. We designed an assessment framework in consultation with NITI Aayog, MoH&FW and other stakeholders to validate the KPIs through onsite assessments at 731 district hospitals of the country. This was an enormous exercise as every district across the country had to be covered for assessing the hospitals.

400+ assessors were engaged for assessments which included NABH assessors as well as medical professionals from institutes like AIIMS Rishikesh, KGMU Lucknow, NEIGRIHMS Shillong among others. The assessors were trained in training programs conducted by QCI-NABH across 17 cities in the country.The team worked tirelessly on multiple components of the project like training and mapping the assessors, operationalizing the assessments,

conducting quality checks of the data received, report writing, presentations with the States and NITI Aayog among others. This provided valuable learning opportunity to the team where they got to understand end-to-end project implementation.

QCI positively completed the assessments in a span of 4 months. The efforts of the team were greatly commended by Mr. Alok Kumar, Advisor, Health, NITI Aayog.

The exercise undertaken by QCI was significant because this was the first time any national survey was done at the District Hospital level at such a large scale.


Artificial Limbs Manufacturing Corporation of India (ALIMCO)


ALIMCO is one of its kind of Government Organisations that produces 355 varied types of quality aids and appliances across its manufacturing facilities for Orthopedically, Visually, Hearing & Intellectually handicapped persons. It is an organisation under the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment and is determined to innovate and enhance the design or performance of their manufactured product.

ALIMCO has been registering a high production growth rate over years. Thus signifying an increase in the consumption of the products and so intended to conduct a third-party assessment of the products that have a high consumption. ALIMCO approached QCI in March 2018 to conduct periodic Third-Party Assessment at ALIMCO manufacturing facility at Kanpur for a set of identified products. The compliance was verified with respect to technical specifications as well as ALIMCO records/documentation relating to input materials, in-process checks and final quality assessment. The overall objective of the assessment was to identify the gaps for improvements in quality and functional performance of ALIMCO products based on quarterly assessment. After the gradual improvement of the product quality and procedures, QCI was again engaged for the year 2019-20 by ALIMCO for quarterly assessment wherein the number of products to be assessed increased from 13 to 16.

Over the last two years, it has been observed that ALIMCO is making step-by-step progress to improve its quality processes and implement good practices. They have adopted several suggestions of QCI such as upgradation to covered storage space to safeguard the manufactured products, ensuring their measuring instruments are calibrated from a NABL accredited labs with valid certificates and upskilling of their employees via training and required certification. It is clearly an indication of development and a welcome step in the right direction.

In continuation with the existing assessment at Kanpur facility, ALIMCO extended the scope of Quality Assessment carried out by QCI for the products/aids being manufactured at its various Auxiliary Production Centres located at Jabalpur (MP), Ujjain (MP), Bengaluru (Karnataka), Bhubaneswar (Odisha) and Mohali (Punjab). The assessment has been conducted on the similar lines that of Kanpur production facility and recently we even did a reassessment at their Mohali Facility and noticed that ALIMCO is getting stronger every day. They are leaving no stone unturned in order to ensure that they are serving the countrymen with the best products which are 'Made in India.’

DARPG 

QCI team stationed at DARPG is currently working on streamlining the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s Public Grievance portal CPGRAMS. The exercise aims at auto forwarding of the lodged grievance to the last mile officer possible throughout the country. Team is involved in direct handholding of top 20 Ministries/ Departments and has completed the exercise in 9 Ministries. 
As a part of our National duty, the team also assisted DARPG with speedy redressal of COVID -19 grievances with an average disposal of 1.45 days. 

(i) Any citizen can lodge a grievance on CPGRAMS vis-a-vis any service not provided. QCI has been working with DARPG from the last 4 years and has assisted DARPG with major reforms exercise for top 40 Ministries.

To make CPGRAMS more user friendly and reduce transition time of a grievance, a study has been undertaken to revamp the CPGRAMS portal by providing citizens with drop downs of grievance categories and sub categories. Once filed, the grievance will directly go to the last mile officer who is responsible to resolve it, thereby skipping multiple levels of transition; however, the Ministry and concerned offices will be flagged about the grievance. This reform has already been introduced in 9 Central Ministries in a phased manner. Mapping 1.5 lakh post offices for Department of Posts and inclusion of all Missions abroad for Ministry of External Affairs have been the most notable highlights of this reform. The team is currently working with the next set of Ministries for speeding up the CPGRAMS reforms aimed to be launched by December 2020

(ii) During the lockdown, QCI team proactively extended their assistance to DARPG for the management of COVID related grievances. After the initial analysis and formulation of COVID-19 grievance Categories and Sub-Categories for the citizen, the team made more than 3000 phone calls to seek feedback from the citizens which eventually led to DARPG setting up a Call Centre to expand the monitoring of these grievances and taking real-time feedback from the citizens.

The team directly reported to the Chairman, Empowered Group 10 set up by Hon’ble Prime Minister in response to COVID-19. Following were the major tasks assigned to QCI:

  • Furnishing of Data reports based on Grievance analysis of Ministries, States and Districts 
  • Assessing the major types of grievance issues in reference to the phases of lockdown and subsequently the Unlock period 
  • Ranking of districts based on grievance redressal feedback to foster competition. A report of the same was sent to PMO and published in The Economic Times
  • Preparation of infographics to provide a bird’s eye view of COVID-19 grievances to Hon’ble Minister of State, PMO 

 

Project Monitoring Unit- Ministry of Tourism


A Project Monitoring Unit (PMU) has been set up in the Ministry of Tourism for assisting the ministry in coordination of action plans with various stakeholders for improving the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) of India. 

QCI conducted a study on Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) report of World Economic Forum (WEF) for Ministry of Tourism in the year 2017 and successfully submitted more than 200 action plans for various central ministries in order to improve India’s ranking in the index.

In extension to the above study, Ministry of Tourism has appointed QCI to set up a PMU to develop an overall framework to improve India’s ranking in TTCI and implement the same.
As per the scope of work, the PMU would perform secondary research and analysis to identify the responsible ministries and coordinate with them in order to monitor and implement the action plans developed by QCI in its study. The PMU would also actively engage with WEF for any necessary activities related to TTCI. 
It will also examine and evaluate existing government schemes to check and track the progress of QCI suggested action plans which could potentially improve India’s ranking in TTCI. 
The exercise undertaken by Ministry of Tourism in collaboration with QCI is significant as the interventions made would positively impact the overall tourism sector of the country and improve its ranking at the global level.
 

- Quality India