EA Members participated in the EA Spring 2024 Technical Committees’ meetings.

Horizontal Harmonisation Committee

Almost 70 participants attended the HHC meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on 6-7 March 2024 chaired by Gabriel Zrenner (DAkkS, the German NAB) and Kristina Hallman (SWEDAC, the Swedish NAB).

HHC members participated in a workshop on Virtual sites/ Virtual organizations. Over the years, EA Members have faced more cases where a Conformity Assessment Body is working in a virtual environment (clouds, databases, video-conferencing tools, etc.). Sometimes it leads to a situation where the Conformity Assessment Body doesn’t need a specific location or even any physical location. They are virtual sites or virtual organizations, and it opens a lot of questions about whether to accept this and/or how to assess it.

HHC will also start revising document EA-2/17 EA Document on Accreditation for Notification purposes.

 

Inspection Committee
Nearly 70 NAB representatives and stakeholders attended the Inspection Committee (IC) meeting on 19 March 2024 in Bucharest chaired by Marek Wilgos (PCA, the Polish NAB) and Marko Verbovsek (SA, the Slovenian NAB.)

Revision of ISO/IEC 17020

The revision of ISO/IEC 17020 – Conformity assessment – Requirements for the operation of various types of bodies performing inspection has been considered in the IC since 2022, notably regarding the definition of “inspection activities”, or the removal of the deputy Technical Manager’s requirements or the clause on the qualification and supervision of inspectors.

Crime Scene Investigation

Members discussed the potential need for guidance for a harmonized approach to witnessing in CSI accreditation (Crime Scene Investigation). Accreditation has an important role in CSI, inter alia:

  • Collection of forensic evidence (sampling) has a crucial effect on work carried out in the laboratory.
  • Crime scene investigation is considered as an inspection activity which involves professional judgement.
  • The development of an accredited quality management system is essential to provide credibility for the whole forensic process (chain of custody).

Publication of IC FAQs on the EA website

The first set of IC members’ questions and answers have been agreed to be published on the EA webpages dedicated to the EA Committees FAQs page.

Interpretation of SERMI scheme requirements

Based on EU legislation, SERMI (Scheme for accreditation, approval and authorization to Access Security-related Repair and Maintenance Information) was appointed by the European Commission to manage the scheme. The mandatory application of the scheme was approved by the EA General Assembly in 2023. The current issue is that there is a “sanction interpretation” paper that contains new provisions that modify the scheme, and any change to a scheme managed under EA rules must be agreed with EA first. Therefore, the Task Force Group has been mandated to revisit the paper and come back to the EA IC. One important issue in this context is the provision regarding cross border activities by the accredited inspection bodies.

 

Certification Committee
90 National Accreditation Bodies representatives and stakeholders participated in the joint Certification Committee (CC) & Inspection Committee workshop relating to accreditation of ISO/IEC 17029 Conformity assessment — General principles and requirements for validation and verification bodies and the impact thereof on schemes, during the CC Meeting on 20-21 March 2024 in Bucharest.

On the second day, 70 CC members approved the new Guidance on Transfers of Accredited Certification of Persons, which is published as EA-8/01 on the EA website. They discussed several recent European Commission (EC) regulations which include provisions of the accreditation of certification bodies.

In September 2024, the CC will organize a workshop aiming at reinforcing harmonization of NABs’ accreditation practices regarding the certification processes subcontracted by international Conformity Bodies to their local office of remote countries based on their “corporate procedures”.

Laboratory Committee
Almost 80 participants attended the Laboratory Committee (LC) meeting on 27-28 March, in Rome, Italy.

Following the Train-the-Trainer course on the new EN ISO/IEC 17043 organised in February 2024, some issues were identified to be further discussed as:

  • Assessment of the testing activities;
  • Assessment of the PT item production.

LC decides to forward the following issues to the EEE-PT WG for a position to be discussed during the next LC meeting in September 2024.

Following the workshop held in September 2023 in Brussels with the main objective to highlight any difficulties met by the national accreditation bodies (NABs) in the flexible scope approach for PTPs, along with any differences in approach, LC Members discussed and confirmed the need to develop guidance on Flexible scopes for Proficiency Testing (PT) Providers. Some general issues and unharmonized approaches were highlighted and LC Members agreed that having guidance would be beneficial on:

  • How to formulate the flexible scope for a PTP;
  • Possible assessment approaches and definition of boundaries.

Revision of EA-4/23

According to the 5 years systematic review rule, LC agreed to revise EA-4/23 INF:2019 The Assessment and accreditation of Opinions and Interpretations using ISO/IEC 17025: 2017 with a special focus on:

  • the use of opinions and interpretations by accredited CABs that do not carry out the testing themselves;
  • the update and clarification of Annex A examples (i.e. adding examples for other emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, fire testing, and forensics areas).