The EA Inspection Committee (IC), hosted by LATAK, the Latvian national accreditation body (NAB), met from 14 to 15 September 2017 for its 34th meeting in Riga (Latvia)

(EC DG ENV), the meeting was chaired by Rolf Straub from SAS, the Swiss national accreditation body (NAB) and started with the announcement of Rolf’s re-election for an exceptional 3rd term at the last EA General Assembly and the election of Orbay Evrensevdi (TURKAK, the Turkish NAB) as EAIC Vice-Chair for the 2018-19 term.

A workshop was held on the first day based on 3 topics (subcontracting and franchising, multisite IBs, how to organise work to meet Regulators’ needs) comprising different questionsconsidered by 6 discussion groups. The outcome of all groups will be consolidated into one single document to draw a conclusion for each question. It was decided that the next workshop at the meeting in September 2018 will focus on testing in inspection, since the topic was very much discussed in Riga.

Special attention was paid to the ILAC G27 Guidance on measurements performed as part of an inspection process. Indeed, the fact that clause 2.3 in ILAC G27, approved for publication by ILAC, provides for the requirement of always using an accredited laboratory to generate results that are used in inspection raised buoyant discussions, stirred up by Lutz Höhne from DAkkS, the German NAB, which submitted a disagreeing comment on this requirement during the comment and ballot phases.

EAIC agreed to submit a request for clarification of the wording of clause 2.3. of ILAC G27 to ILAC IC meeting in Vancouver, arguing that the clause exceeds the requirement of ISO/IEC 17020 including ILAC P15 and ILAC P8. The ILAC G27 requirement shall be redrafted in a way that accreditation shall be the preferred means to demonstrate compliance with the standard, but in justified situations (on the basis of qualified evaluation/professional judgement) non-accredited contributions shall remain accepted.

Regarding the activity of the EAIC TN Car Inspection, Javier Barroso (ENAC, the Spanish NAB) was elected as the new convener of the TN from 2018 onwards, to succeed to Tomas Holm (SWEDAC, the Swedish NAB). Tomas will liaise with J. Barroso to ensure smooth and efficient transfer of TN’s responsibilities. An issue remains on the TN agenda to meet the International Motor Vehicle Inspection Committee’s request for increasing EA-CITA cooperation by setting up a small TFG within the TN.

A presentation was then made by Pierre Henry from EC DG ENV to detail the state-of-play of the EU ETV programme and to discuss with EAIC members on 2 points:

  • Could NABs accept the accreditation of an organisation to ISO 17020 for applying ISO 14034 with the EU GVP Version 1.3 in the accreditation scope – therefore merging the requirements and procedures applied under both?
  • Given the lack of programme requirements, technology scope and quality requirements in the ISO 14034, could NABs consider the EU GVP as the appropriate accreditation path for ISO 14034 in Europe?

The results of discussions will be sent to EU ETV Informal Leading Group within the EAIC in order to collect answers by end of 2017 and send them to P. Henry for consideration before further development of the General Verification protocol (GVP).

On behalf of her ENAC colleague Susana Huerta, EA contact person for ERA issues, Claudia de la Calle (ENAC) gave an update on the Interoperability Directive (IOD) and Common Safety Methods (CSM) for risk assessment. The railway sector’s “NoBo Assessment Scheme” has finally been published by ERA. The implementation of this scheme “Requirements for Conformity Assessment Bodies seeking notification” by EA NABs is being considered by the HCC in September 2017 in view of its adoption by EA as a Level 4 document. In June 2017, EA was invited to the first coordination meeting on the preparation of the peer evaluations by ERA which are required in Article 14 of Regulation 402/2013 on the CSM for risk assessment.

The Chair also invited EAIC Members to carefully read the EA Strategy 2025 document, especially EA’s core values on page 14 that support the implementation of the Strategy and encourage EA Members to speak with one voice.

The discussion on the survey on inspection scopes, agreed in March 2017 to be considered by IC members in order to better compare and discuss how they would present inspection scopes on accreditation certificates for both pressure vessels and lifts, has been postponed until 2018.

The next EAIC meeting, hosted by UKAS, the English NAB, will be held on 13 March 2018 in Windsor area.