About us

Our vision: To place quality at the heart of every organisation

The Chartered Quality Institute is the chartered body for quality management professionals. Established in 1919 and formerly the Institute of Quality Assurance, we gained a Royal Charter in 2006, and became the CQI shortly afterwards in January 2007.

Incorporated by Royal Charter and a registered charity (no. 259678) the CQI exists to benefit the public by advancing education in, knowledge of and the practice of quality in industry, commerce, the public sector and the voluntary sectors. In short, the CQI exists to help make business better.

We promote the quality management approach, based on planning, measurement and improvement, which delivers the following benefits for organisations:

  • improved customer satisfaction 
  • reduced costs and improved profitability 
  • improvement and innovation 
  • identification and management risk 
  • corporate care and responsibility

We recognise that these business outcomes can only be delivered by competent quality professionals, CQI members, and in support of this the CQI provides the following services:

  • promoting the benefits of the quality management approach to industry
  • maintaining the Body of Quality Knowledge
  • disseminating quality knowledge and resources 
  • providing qualifications and training
  • assessing and recognising quality competence

To find out more about quality, visit our What is quality? page or download the CQI corporate brochure.

In pursuit of our vision, we have defined six agendas:

Agenda 1 - Influence, image and brand

Our influencing agenda aims to mainstream quality as a key competitive tool through our active engagement with industry, government, regulatory bodies and other institutes on policy and standard setting. In addition, recognising that the quality infrastructure is cluttered we work towards clarity through collaboration and partnership.

Agenda 2 - Knowledge creation and publication

Our knowledge creation and innovation agenda aims to establish the institute as a widely recognised leader by expanding the frontiers of the professional body of knowledge in quality through a defined mix of original work, research that we encourage or catalyse, and work that we discover and publish through our website and publishing functions.

Agenda 3 - Knowledge sharing with organisations

Our organisational agenda aims to help all organisations benefit from the sustained benefits of quality by providing access to quality knowledge delivered through an increasing range of services provided by the CQI and partner organisations.

Agenda 4 - Knowledge sharing with individuals

Our individual agenda aims to help individuals to help their organisations improve by increasing the range of services provided by the CQI.

Agenda 5 - Knowledge assessment and recognition

Our assessment agenda aims to help all organisations and individuals benefit from our recognition of their achievements in quality through our membership, certification, qualifications, awards and other schemes.

Agenda 6 - Being an excellent organisation recognised as the quality champion

Our excellence agenda recognises that we must practise what we preach in terms of the CQI's own approach to operating as a business.

Become a member

Find out how

CQI membership is a clear demonstration that you are serious about quality and competent to apply quality concepts, principles and techniques to improve performance.

Whether you are starting out in quality , or already experienced, we have a grade of membership for you.

Chartered Quality Institute

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See Also

International Register of Certificated Auditors

IRCA is the CQI's personnel certification division. We have 14,750 registered auditors in 150 countries and more than 50,000 people have attended IRCA registered training courses.

Go to IRCA's website