CES is very proud to announce that its Q5® Water Quality Standard – which thousands of Florida pool owners and operators use as a daily guideline to help provide the safest pool facilities for patrons and guests – has received certification from the Council for the Model Aquatic Health Code (CMAHC). Press release here.
The Model Aquatic Health Code (MAHC) – spearheaded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) – is the only true all-inclusive national model health code. It was co-written by a national group of health department and pool industry leaders, including CES, starting back in 2010. After lots of review by some really smart folks, it was first released in 2014 with the 3rd Edition being released in 2018.
The CMAHC is a membership group of health department and industry folks (yes you are encouraged to join) that exists to manage updates to the code and to promote voluntary adoption of the code. What is so unusual about this code? Not only was it peer written, it is peer reviewed, and peer modified via a voting process by the hundreds of CMAHC members. This is very unusual for a health code. In places like Florida, which is blessed with a terrific DOH code, the MAHC serves as a best practice guideline, which is why tweaking the Q5® to this standard made so much sense.
In its most basic form, Q5® provides nearly every CES customer with simple daily, weekly, and monthly guidelines in order to provide the safest possible facilities. It was originally aligned with helping achieve full compliance to the Florida Department of Health (DOH) code. But more importantly, it goes BEYOND the code, including items not covered such as water balance, maintenance, redundancy, checks and balances, control & communications, etc. to provide owners & operators with a verifiable game plan on how to continually improve their facilities.
The full Q5® program is prescriptive, which means it provides an objective roadmap to facility improvement. When you implement a better system or method, your rating goes up. It includes a clear and simple 1-Star to 5-Star rating system, based on nearly 100 objective technical milestones in 5 categories. Facilities can track their measurable improvements over the years as they gradually progress.
These improvements, accomplished with training, procedures, and technical or mechanical upgrades, help the facility become safer and more economical to operate. As the MAHC evolved, it really raised the bar for all pool owners and operators, that now not only had to comply with DOH Codes, but also keep an eye on the “BEST PRACTICE” national standard provided by the MAHC. Some states are even adopting the MAHC as their main code.
So the Q5®’s recent tweak to achieve certification with the MAHC national model code will help CES customers nationwide keep pace with the industry. Find out more about the implementing the Q5® program in your facility. Safer seems to be better… a lesson learned as we all continue to slowly recover from the COVID pandemic.
Stay Safe
