Akkreditierung

The subject of the attestation

The subject is the conformity assessment body: a laboratory, an inspection body or a certification body. The attestation does not pass through to the body’s clients. A tested product, a certified system or a certified person remains the subject of that body’s own report or certificate.

Competence is specific. It is competence to perform the activities described, with the methods, schemes and locations that the scope identifies. A body can be accredited for one activity and simply unaccredited for another. Silence in a scope is not coverage.

Accreditation and certification

Akkreditierung

An attestation, by an accreditation body, of the competence, impartiality and consistent operation of a conformity assessment body for a defined scope.

Certification

An attestation, by a certification body, that a product, process, service, system or person fulfils specified requirements.

Testing and calibration

Determination of a characteristic, or of a relation between a measuring instrument and a standard. The laboratory reports the result. Accreditation concerns the laboratory’s competence to do so.

Inspection

Examination of an item and a judgement of conformity. The inspection body issues the report. Accreditation concerns that body’s competence for the inspections in its scope.

What users of results may look for

A person who relies on a report or a certificate can ask three questions. Is the body that issued it identified? Is the activity within a published scope? Is the scope described precisely enough to include the work that was done?

Where a public directory is maintained with care, it is the place to answer the second question. The directory on this site is that place. It currently publishes no records. The verification page explains how to read a record when one exists, and how to read the empty state.

Benefits that accreditation is designed to provide

These are the purposes of the discipline. They describe what a properly conducted accreditation is for. They are not a claim that AKZERT currently delivers them under an international arrangement.

• A defined scope, so that competence is not stated more broadly than the evidence.
• An assessment of the way the work is actually performed, including witnessed activity where the activity requires it.
• A decision separated from the assessment.
• A public record that a third party can consult.
• Surveillance and reassessment, so that a grant is not a single unreviewed event.