The training of specialists for the field of quality rests on the ability to navigate the body of standardization documents, technical regulations and quality management system standards; yet a persistent gap remains between the requirements formally set for a graduate and the actual command of these documents. The federal state educational standard for the field 27.03.02 and the professional standard «Quality Specialist» presuppose confident handling of normative documentation, whereas the corresponding skill is usually formed incidentally in the educational process, without a dedicated didactic support. The aim of the work is to define the place of the ability to work with normative documentation within the structure of professional readiness and to propose pedagogical grounds for its purposeful formation. The structural-functional approach, content analysis of the current educational and professional standards, modelling and conceptual-categorical examination are applied. An author's model of normative-documentary readiness is proposed, integrating motivational-value, cognitive, operational-activity and reflexive-evaluative components, together with a taxonomy of operations with standardization documents and a matrix matching normative requirements to pedagogical means. Three levels of skill formation are distinguished: reproductive, adaptive and productive-creative. It is established that the ability to work with normative documentation acts not as a peripheral technical skill but as a system-forming element of professional readiness for activity in the field of quality: it links subject knowledge to the regulatory environment of the profession and determines the graduate's capacity to act amid the continuous updating of requirements.