The EA Certification (EA CC) and Inspection (EA IC) Committees held their 29th meetings on 3-4 and 5-6 March 2015, respectively, in Bern, Switzerland, next door to the office building of SAS, the Swiss NAB. Both meetings focused on application of the new version of some accreditation standards through buoyant workshops, as well as on those EA and ILAC/IAF documents that are being revised or adopted.
Strategic certification discussions
The EA CC Chair, Leopoldo Cortez from the Portuguese NAB (IPAC), was assisted by Kevin Belson from the UK NAB (UKAS), the recently-appointed CC Vice-Chair, throughout the meeting.
One full morning was dedicated to a strategic group discussion aimed at considering the High Level Structure (HLS) elements of Conformity Assessment Standards. Three questions were actively discussed with a focus on the way in which ABs will assess the competence and approach of CBs with regard to the HLS elements of the certification standards:
– How can a Certification Body demonstrate to an Accreditation Body its ability to assess the organisation’s Risk Based Thinking?
– How can a Certification Body demonstrate to an Accreditation Body how Organisational Context is built in to audit programmes and activities?
– At a witnessed assessment, what might the NAB expect to see to identify that the Certification Body has understood and implemented the new requirements of the certification standard resulting from the HLS?
The discussion outcome was summarized by the EA CC Vice-Chair before being elaborated on and sent to IAF TC for discussions at IAF level.
CC members had also lively discussions on the following topics:
– Non-accredited certification offered by accredited CBs
The solution agreed as the best one is that the CB/CAB has to perform the accredited activity as if it was under accreditation, unless it is otherwise contractually established with its client and allowed by the scheme and legal requirements that are applicable. A formal paper should be drafted in light of meeting discussions to set out a harmonized rationale for this solution to be clarified at the IAF level by some normative text.
– Approach to the transitions to new ISO 9001 and 14001
There was an agreement that there are not so many changes in new ISO 9001; the major modification lies in the different kinds of auditing, on which EA should find a consensus for European ABs. A formal paper should be drafted in light of meeting discussions to set out a harmonized EA position for ISO 9001 transition to be discussed at the IAF level.
– Status of implementation of ISO/IEC 17024:2012 and ISO/IEC 17065:2012
The CC agreed to send EA ABs a questionnaire about the implementation status of ISO/IEC 17024:2012 and ISO/IEC 17065:2012 once the deadline for transitions is closed on 15 September 2015, and to discuss the consolidated outcome at the meeting in October 2015.
– Outsourced processes/activities vs scope of certification
It was agreed that the question should be re-discussed at the next CC meeting in October 2015 in light of the IAF TC Decision Log and the outcome of IAF MD 5 revision.
Regarding documentation, as approved by the EA General Assembly in November 2011, the drafting of an EA harmonization guidance on the application of ISO/IEC 17021:2011 for OHSAS 18001 has been slowly progressing within a CC TFG, which was reshuffled in Bern. The numerous comments received on a first draft in December 2014 are being consolidating into a new draft to be sent for a new round of comments. Once finalized, the OHSMS document should be put forward as guidance to IAF TC.
Besides a new work item will be submitted to the EA General Assembly in May 2015 in order to revise EA-6/03: EA Document for Recognition of Verifiers under the EU ETS Directive further to the EA CC Network Group EU ETS’ recommendation for considering the witnessing approach as an informative annex.
Finally the EA CC agreed to recommend EA to adopt latest versions of IAF MD8, MD9, MD13, MD16, MD17, MD18 as mandatory documents for all EA members. Moreover the EA CC will recommend the EA General Assembly in May 2015 to endorse that IAF MD 2:2007 (Transfer of Accredited Certification of Management Systems) be applied to all management systems under the EA MLA and not only to QMS and EMS (current IAF MLA sub-scopes).
An ambitious inspection workshop
The new IC Vice-Chair, Tomas Holm from the Swedish NAB (SWEDAC), assisted in the management of the meeting chaired by Rolf Straub from the Swiss NAB (SAS).
The first meeting day was almost entirely dedicated to a large workshop during which IC members, divided into several groups, considered the main sections of ISO/IEC 17010:2012 (impartiality and independence, organisation and management, personnel, facilities and equipment, subcontracting, etc.) to answer key questions about the use of ILAC P15:2014 for application of the new version of ISO/IEC 17020. The discussion outcome is being summarized and elaborated on by the EAIC Chair for the EA General Assembly in May 2015, when the EA IC will present a positive recommendation for EA’s adoption of ILAC P15, while stressing that Clause 8.1.3 in ISO/IEC 17020 should be clarified further.
The EA IC restarted its discussions on how ABs and accredited IBs should define their scopes. Different NABs’ published scopes of accreditation were presented and commented; the issue should be further considered at the October 2015 meeting.
Since a few years, the EA IC has been paying careful attention to accreditation of car inspection for the purposes of harmonization and mutual recognition of PTI (Periodical Technical Inspections) in Europe within the framework of the European Commission’s Road Safety Programme for 2011-2020. Due to great national discrepancies, a technical network specific for car inspection, convened by T. Holm, has been running for an expertise group to share information, experiences and practices. Each EU Member State has now two options: either a supervising body shall be introduced to perform supervising tasks, or accreditation of the testing centres shall be required. In March 2015, it was agreed that the EA IC should now consider how EU Member States are discussing so as to require accreditation of inspection centres. How every EU Member State is planning roadside inspections should also be discussed within the EA IC. In the meanwhile, a specific TFG has been performing the subsequent revision of EA-5/02: Guidance on the application of EN 45004 in recurrent inspection of motor vehicles. A revised draft presented at the October 2014 meeting was sent out for IC comments, which were consolidated into a new draft submitted at the March 2015 meeting. Endorsed by the EA IC, the new draft is now commented by EA Members and Recognized Stakeholders until 23 June 2015.