MIAMI – When Adelino Martins, president of JetAir Support Inc. of Miami decided to go after military contracts, he realized his company would have to become ISO certified in order to compete.

“In order to expand the opportunities for my company and to compete for contracts with government and overseas customers, I realized we had to become ISO certified or lose business,” Martins said. “The question was how we were going to go about getting certified.”

While the process to become ISO certified entailed a lot of hard work, time and effort, it was definitely worth it, according to Martins. “Gil Lugo worked with us for 10 months,” he said. “He was knowledgeable and spoke Spanish, which definitely allowed him to communicate with many of my employees.”

That was important Martins said because it made him feel confident that his employees were able to understand the ISO process and why it was important for the company to go through the process.

“The grandness and size of the project was impressive,” Martins said, “and in the beginning it was difficult. But as time went by, we all began to understand where it was going and realized the structure of the program was similar to what is required by the FAA.”

JetAir Support Inc. is an FAA and JAA Certified Repair Station. The company has been located in Miami since 1992 and currently employs a workforce of 14 highly trained machinists.

A full-service repair station, JetAir provides welding, turning, broaching, grinding, cleaning and painting to MIL standards. JetAir currently serves U.S. airlines; foreign carriers and other repair and overhaul facilities and turbine engine parts suppliers.

“We have always been able to bid on government contracts and are approved to do work for the Department of Defense,” Martins said, “but adding the ISO 9001:2000 certification has certainly been worth it.”

In fact, since becoming certified, JetAir has increased sales by $800,000.

Martins agreed. “The procedures have been very helpful, especially inside the front office,” he said. “Because we are regulated by the FAA, we are used to doing things in a certain way within the shop, but we have expanded the uniform way in which we do business in our buying, our paperwork process and the way we do business every day.”

Adelino Martins, President, Jetair Support