Fifty (50) would-be assessors joined the 2nd Assessors’ Preparatory Course organized by The DTI – Competitiveness Bureau , the implementing agency of the Philippine Quality Award (PQA) is in partnership with the Philippine Quality Award Foundation conducted the 2nd Assessors Preparatory Course at  the One Tagaytay Place, Tagaytay City this year. The 5-days training course aimed to beef up the PQA pool of assessors and to develop the technical competencies of participants to evaluate PQA applications and to conduct quality management assessment of applicant- organizations.  

The course was participated by top-level executives and mid-level managers from the academic, government, IT-BPO, and health sectors. Being a PQA assessor is not an easy task, as it requires a lot of technical knowledge to assess an applicant. Therefore, participants were expected to gain  competencies required to  review and assess award applications and learn to plan and conduct site visits. They would also acquire skills to prepare a feedback report and present the results of assessment to the board of judges and applicant organizations.

The training course was conducted by Dr. Luis Maria "Chito" R. Calingo a Baldridge examiner and PQA Consultant and the current President of the Holy Angel University in Pampanga, in which his extensive experience in the field of education include serving as a professor and dean of business schools of various colleges and universities in the US such as California State University and Woodbury University. Dr. Calingo was a recipient of the Juran Medal from the Philippine Society for Quality in 2015.

At the end of the learning program, participants would have:

Gained competencies required to review and assess award applications;

Learned to plan and conduct site visits;

Acquired skills to prepare a feedback report and present the results of assessment to the board of judges and applicant organizations.

The training process involveds lectures, individual and group exercises and comments, and a  writing workshop based on the selected case study.

In this round of training course, the implementing agencyPQAF adopts has adopted the 2015-2016 US Baldridge criteria which, which will bewas discussed and explained by Dr. Calingo.  A PQA consultant who is the Resource Person, Dr. Luis Ma. "Chito" Calingo a Baldridge examiner,examiner and the current President of the Holy Angel University in Pampanga., Dr. Luis Ma. "Chito" Calingo as the Resource Person.

Moreover, Dr. Calingo re-engineered the training modules to provide the participants more in-depth understanding of the PQA.   According to him, the appropriate assessment behaviors are best learned at the assessors' very first time that they touch the PQA -- the basic assessor preparation course. Senior assessors also joined the training towho want to keep themselves updated with the current practices in the Baldridge also participated the training.

The quality of training received by the participants and the rigid process of developing the technical competence of the assessors only proves that PQA only selects the best of the firms in terms of performance excellence.