In practice: where an inspection body subcontracts any part of inspection, the competence of its should be assessed, as well as if appropriate equipment is used by subcontractor and many others aspects should be taken into account to demonstrate that the requirements of the clause 6.3.4 of ISO/IEC 17020:2012 are fulfilled.
The question is: shall the inspection body document a procedure, that includes criteria for assessing the competence of subcontractors, of used equipment, as well as describe the evaluation process of conformity to these criteria and the final approval process, as the basis why the current subcontractor is chosen?
September 2019
There is not specific requirement of a documented procedure, the inspection body should analyze if it needs a documented procedure for subcontracting.
6.3.4 requires records about investigation of the competence of a subcontractor.
The clauses 6.3.1 and 6.3.4 refer to this International standard (it is ISO/IEC 17020:2012) or other relevant conformity assessment standards (like ISO/IEC 17025:2017). It is up to the competence of the Inspection Body to determine which are the applicable requirements and how to assess them.
That means that when subcontracting tests for the inspection, the inspection body should ask for a laboratory accredited under ISO/IEC 17025:2017 or has to assess that the subcontractor fulfils ISO/IEC 17025:2017 for the test subcontracted and keep the records about this assessment.
Subcontracting of parts of the inspection is allowed only in exceptional cases (see Note 1 of 6.3.1).