ASSOCIATIONS

MORE THAN EVER, IAPCO IS THE PCO’s QUALITY BRAND!
Over 70 IAPCO members met in the beautiful city of Sevilla early February for the Annual Meeting and General Assembly of the universally renowned association of Professional Congress Organizers.
IAPCO has been for decades known for its position in the meetings marketplace as being the benchmark of meetings management quality. Because of the evolution of the market, members decided 2 years ago to start rethinking the quality control of the association. This led to a re-enforcement of the membership criteria under the control of an independent Quality Control Committee.
In Sevilla, the members have unanimously voted for this new process where application procedures have been further tightened to ensure the quality control that members and clients expect from the association.
Whilst much of the application procedure has been operated for many years, today, with this new strict monitoring system in place, applications will continue to be closely scrutinised. But once a member, there was no specific action to control the members continuing professionalism. To this end, members agreed at the Annual Meeting, to implement a self-assessment quality programme, combined with a quality check to be monitored by the independent Quality Committee.
“This is a fantastic development for IAPCO ” says Patrizia Buongiorno, Chair of the Quality Committee and IAPCO Vice-President, “and for clients who will, from 2008 onwards, be able to see on the website, which members have participated in the quality check programme. Furthermore members will be able to benchmark themselves against the world’s leading PCOs on an on-going basis, and judge any areas which they feel they may wish to improve upon”. The members fully endorsed the programme, the first stages of which will be launched in April 2007.