At its last meetings on 25-26 March 2014 in Oslo, Norway, the EA Certification Committee elected Kevin Belson, the UKAS representative, as its Vice-Chair.

Kevin Belson, an active CC member

Kevin Belson’s main task consists of assisting the EA/CC Chair, Leopoldo Cortez from IPAC, the Portuguese NAB, in managing the daily operation of the Committee. The Vice-Chair will also assist the Chair in following the work of the dedicated EA/CC task forces, ensuring their reporting and feedback, and managing other parts of the agenda as mutually agreed. He might sometimes replace him in the chairing of a meeting (or parts of) and ensure an EA/CC representation/liaison to the European Commission or IAF Technical Committee, if needed.

So far Kevin has been taking a most active part in the EA/CC activities. He has been contributing to the revision of EA-6/02: EA Guidelines on the Use of EN 45 011 and ISO/IEC 17021 for Certification to EN ISO 3834, encouraging the participation of the European Welding Foundation (EWF) in the updating of the document.
He also acts as a liaison person with the ETSI Technical Committee Electronic Signatures and Infrastructures (ESI) in order for the EA/CC to support the ongoing development of the ETSI scheme, specifically with regard to the conformity assessment requirements.
Finally, for several meetings, Kevin has been a most efficient convener of the EA CC Review Panel, a small expert group in charge of giving preliminary and finalized answers to the questions raised by CC Members or other EA technical committees and discussed at each CC preparatory meeting.

EA/CC Management Group

Kevin’s election as the EA/CC Vice-Chair follows the establishment of the EA/CC Management Group in 2013, which has been reflected in the terms of reference and rules of procedure of the Committee revised in October 2013 and approved by the EA general Assembly in November 2013.

The EA/CC Management Group (MG), which results from a previous Agenda Panel in charge of selecting CC-relevant issues and defining meeting agendas, aims at ensuring an optimal management of EA/CC work inside and outside of meetings. The MG should contribute to and confirm CC meeting agendas and ensure efficient bidirectional communication between the CC and its WGs, TFGs and the Review Panel. Additional members may be added as needed to help achieving its aims. The interaction between the MG members is made by electronic means (e-mail, web meetings).

The EA/CC MG includes the Chair, the Vice-Chair, as well as the conveners of the EA/CC WGs and the Review Panel who, in mid-May 2014, are Niels-Christian Dalstrup (DANAK) for the EA EU ETS Network Group (previous GHG WG), Casper van Erp (RvA) for the Environment WG, Pam Beha (UKAS) for the Food WG and Kevin Belson for the Review Panel, as well as Varpu Rantanen (FINAS) for her expert contribution in international matters.
A new convener should be elected for the Food WG at its next meeting on 17-18 June 2014.
The rotating convener of the Review Panel should also be renewed for the next CC meetings in autumn 2014 and spring 2015 with, respectively, Radim Frolik from CAI, the Czech NAB, and Trevor Nash from EFAC, the European Federation of Associations of Certification bodies.

The EA/CC MG is currently dealing with a first task of the utmost importance: consolidating and finalizing the outcome of the strategic discussions which were held in March in Oslo in order to get a detailed overview of CC members’ expectations to improve the operation and efficiency of the Committee. For this, a web meeting is planned on 11 June 2014.