Initiative idea

The King Abdulaziz Quality Award is a national award in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, established by a resolution of the Council of Ministers under Royal Decree No. 7/B/18670 dated 27/11/1420H. The award is comparable to similar awards at the regional and global levels. It aims to implement a unified reference framework for institutional excellence standards, with the National Excellence Model of the King Abdulaziz Quality Award serving as the main driver for quality and excellence practices across all sectors in the Kingdom, regardless of their size or field of work.

The award contributes to achieving several advantages in the field of institutional work, related to organizational creativity and achieving institutional leadership for the university. The National Excellence Model focuses primarily on beneficiaries’ outcomes, as distinguished institutions are those that achieve results that meet beneficiaries’ needs and exceed their expectations.

Initiative Objectives

Participation in the King Abdulaziz Quality Award aims to achieve a number of institutional objectives, including:

1. Adding value by enhancing the university’s institutional excellence practices.
2. Benefiting from continuous improvement and development of the university’s strategic and operational practices and activities.
3. Applying institutional excellence practices and concepts through specific programs and working tools.
4. Conducting self-assessment of the university’s institutional excellence and developing improvement action plans where needed.
5. Ensuring sustainability by transferring and embedding outstanding knowledge and expertise across all university sectors.

Importance of the Initiative

The importance of this initiative stems from the university’s commitment to performance improvement and enhancing the level of its operations, services, and outputs in support of regional and global competitiveness. Participation in the King Abdulaziz Quality Award is considered one of the cornerstones for achieving the university’s future aspirations in institutional quality, delivering results that meet and exceed the expectations of its beneficiaries.

Implementation Activities

Phase One: Training and qualifying representatives of the university’s sectors through the training program provided by the King Abdulaziz Quality Award.

Phase Two: Forming a dedicated working team for each award criterion to ensure alignment between the university’s institutional performance and the enablers and results outlined in the model. Each team included representatives from all university sectors (academic, research, administrative, students, alumni, and local community stakeholders). The university also ensured the distribution of the trained team members, qualified by the award body, across all criteria teams.

Phase Three: Completing the readiness model, which contains information related to performance, to be submitted to the award administration as part of the university’s application process.

Phase Four: Hosting the assessors of the King Abdulaziz Quality Award during the period of October 4–6, 2020.

Summary of Achievements and Number of Beneficiaries

• All planned tasks have been accomplished, and the university is now awaiting the evaluation results.
• The project involved all beneficiaries of the university’s services and outputs, both internal and external: leadership, faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and local community stakeholders.

Expected Outcomes

• Assessing the degree of institutional excellence performance at King Faisal University.
• Highlighting the university’s most outstanding practices.
• Identifying and strengthening areas of strength.
• Pinpointing areas that require improvement, with the aim of turning them into strengths and leveraging them for further development.