Quality assurance (QA) is any systematic process of determining whether a product or service meets specified requirements. QA establishes and maintains set requirements for developing or manufacturing reliable products. A quality assurance system is meant to increase customer confidence and a company’s credibility, while also improving work processes and efficiency, and it enables a company to better compete with others.

In TVET Quality Assurance can be defined as the processes and procedures ensuring that qualifications in terms of competences and ability, assessment and programme delivery meet certain standards. Quality assurance comprises the processes of ensuring that specified standards and requirements for TVET provision, curriculum design and development, learning, TVET management, accreditation, assessment and the recording of achievements are met.

TNNP (then called NIST) joined the process of quality assurance in the year 2010. The process involved identifying the mandate and scope of the institution, the procedures of service delivery and the personnel responsible for carrying out the procedures. The next step involved documenting these procedures in a Quality Management System(QMS) manual. The institute was certified under ISO 9001:2008 standard by the Kenya Bureau of Standards in 2011.

The institute was recertified under the ISO 9001:2015 in September 2018. The vision of the department is to ensure that all activities in TNNP whether production of goods or delivery of services are performed as per the set standards and procedures as provided by the QMS. 

Monitoring and evaluation of compliance is conducted through regular internal audits by the institute’s quality department and the external audits undertaken by KEBS the certification body.

The department has played a crucial role in the formulation of procedures and policy documents notable among them the Customer Service Delivery Charter and ensuring compliance.

Currently the department is being restructured and revamped to be able to face the future prospects ahead especially the upgrading to a National Polytechnic.