The European co-operation for Accreditation (EA) is recognized by the European Commission as the European Accreditation Infrastructure and one of its tasks is to operate the peer evaluation system according to Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 on accreditation.

To perform these peer evaluations (PE), EA mandates peer evaluators, highly qualified and experienced National Accreditation Body (NAB) staff members.

Due to the pandemic crisis, peer evaluations have been entirely conducted remotely since 2020, forcing EA peer evaluators and NABs to adapt extremely quickly to ensure the same level of competence and reliability. Two years have now passed, and peer evaluators have a better experience of remote peer evaluations.

One of these EA peer evaluators is Mrs Mija Renko, Lead Assessor for testing laboratories and certification bodies for management systems for the Slovenian National Accreditation Body (NAB) SA. She is now sharing her experience.

Dear Mija, you have been a Peer evaluator of EA for 9 years and seen the evolutions of the peer-evaluation system since then. The last changes are due to COVID-19. As a Team Leader, what has changed when you perform peer evaluations remotely?  

The biggest change is the lack of a genuine contact with people. I personally miss that. Every remote evaluation (or assessment) is strictly business-related, we cannot have small talks during breaks. We cannot stay “together” in the same meeting room, everyone goes their own way to have tea, coffee or a snack. Also during lunch, we cannot talk to each other as we do when the evaluations are performed on-site.

What are the benefits and the disadvantages of remote peer evaluations, and what would be the impact of having hybrid peer evaluations in your opinion?

In my opinion, the only benefit of remote peer-evaluations is that one does not spend time travelling to other countries. This is especially true in countries such as Slovenia where it is difficult to get direct flights. Sometimes it takes the whole day to get to the destination, even in Europe!

Here are some disadvantages I have identified: when preparing for the peer-evaluation, the evaluator has to decide in advance what kind of records will be necessary to review and inform the NAB under evaluation accordingly. The NAB should then prepare those records, if possible in “pdf” format and send them to the evaluator or just have them prepared to share them on screen during the evaluation. This takes much more time for both the evaluators and the NAB. Also the contact and interaction with the team is a bit more difficult. There are a lot more emails among team members, it is not as easy to have an email discussion as to have a quick talk with a team member. It is also more difficult to define and agree on non-conformities. Final meetings are difficult to conduct since the team leader cannot see all the people who are present in the meeting.

One last thing you would like to add?

Whenever possible, let’s come back to on-site evaluations!