The 32th meeting of the EA Inspection Committee (EA IC) was hosted on 15 and 16 September 2016 in Tallinn, Estonia, by the national accreditation body EAK.
Picture: Rolf Straub, the EAIC Chair, from SAS, the Swiss national accreditation body.
The Tallinn EA IC meeting lasted two full days, which made extensive and fruitful discussions easier on several issues. In particular, the first day was entirely dedicated to a workshop, whose questions to be answered by 6 groups of attending IC members had been most carefully elaborated on by the EAIC Chair, Rolf Straub, from SAS, the Swiss national accreditation body (NAB).
The priority themes of this workshop, which had been agreed upon at the previous IC meeting in light of the outcome and remaining issues of a workshop held in March 2015 on ISO/IEC 17020: 2012 / ILAC P15: 2014, focused on:
– independence and impartiality;
– inspection scopes on accreditation certificates;
– differences between testing and inspection.
Independence and impartiality were further considered by Ger Nijhoff from RvA, the Dutch NAB, who made an exhaustive presentation during the plenary meeting on 16 September. He gave a very valuable analysis of the issues and the many situations likely to occur at the assessment level. It was a good summary of everything that could be seen by NABs.
Discussions on inspection scopes on accreditation certificates were also followed up at the plenary session, since IC members had to send representative scopes relating to pressure vessels (regulated field) and periodic inspection of lifts (non-regulated field) a few months ago in order for the Chair to identify some similarities. The scopes received from members were examined during the workshop itself, whose outcome should be consolidated and further analysed.
The EA IC was requested to evaluate the need for revision of ISO/IEC 17020:2012, normally expected in 2017. IC members’ opinion is that revision of the standard is not necessary in the immediate future and can be postponed for further 5 years, thus agreeing with the position of CEN/CENELEC TC1.
The EAIC Vice-Chair, Tomas Holm from SWEDAC, the Swedish NAB, reported on the latest developments in the EAIC Technical Network Car Inspection, of which he is the convener. He notably updated the whole Committee on the development of a regulation that did not recognize accreditation for technical services for car type approval in a satisfactory manner. Because the regulation is still under development at a drafting stage, and negotiated in the EU Council and Member States (MS), there is still some room for influencing the text in a favourable way to include requirements based on accreditation in the regulation. Tomas Holm will provide arguments to be used by EA NABs to support discussions at national level.
Regarding EA’s cooperation with the European Railway Agency (ERA), Claudia de la Calle from ENAC, the Spanish NAB, presented a report on progress made on draft application guidance on CMS (Common Safety Method) assessment, on behalf of her colleague Susana Huerta who is the EA contact person for IOD (Inter-Operability Directive) and CSM issues. The report also informed that Andreas Steinhorst, the EA Executive Secretary, and Susana Huerta contributed to a training workshop held in April focusing on:
– harmonised use of accreditation for assessing the competence of various conformity assessment bodies;
– use of accreditation for assessing the competence of a CSM assessment body.
The EAIC briefly discussed concerns stated by UKAS, the UK NAB, regarding the role of conformity assessment (in accordance with Regulation (EC) 765/2008) in Directive 2009/15/EC and the current development of the Regulation (EC) No 391:2009 on common rules for ship inspection and survey organisations. UKAS will invite IC members, especially from NABs in Member States with developed industry in the field, to look at the regulation very carefully. The proposed infrastructure for inspection requires EA’s attention, the objective being to be able to anticipate any further development, particularly about impartiality. In addition, Orbay Evrensevdi from TURKAK, the Turkish NAB, informed that accreditation of ship inspection was in place in Turkey based on national regulations. In March 2017, he will present the national oriented accreditation scheme.
Finally, invited by the EAIC Chair to explain EUROLAB’s position on accreditation of sampling as a standalone activity, the EUROLAB representative, Wilfried Hinrichs, reported that EUROLAB did not support sampling as a standalone activity either under ISO/IEC 17020 or ISO/IEC 17025. Another more specific standard should be used instead and a definition should be endorsed, because EUROLAB maintains its position that it is not a conformity assessment activity. So far, the EA General Assembly has agreed that, as soon as accreditation is used for sampling as a standalone activity, sampling shall always be treated as being in direct connection with a distinct inspection, testing or calibration process.
The next EAIC meeting will take place on 14 March 2017 in Antalya, Turkey, together with the meeting of the EA Certification Committee on 15-16 March.