Is your ISO Certificate valid?
Your customers rely on certification to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 as confidence in your performance, just as you rely on your suppliers to hold credible management systems. But is your certificate valid?QCS International regularly gets calls from people who cannot understand why they have lost out on yet another tender or why a particular supplier is such a poor performer dispite holding ISO 9001.
The key here is to check that any management system has been certified by a UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) accredited body.
Case Study
An engineering company based in Aberdeen, called us because their main customer claimed that their certificate was not worth the paper it was written on.
The problem? A non-UKAS accredited company had awarded the certificate to ISO 9001.
Not only this but their certification only covered the administration part of the business and not anything to do with the engineering/fabrication part of the business – their manual had even excluded calibration from certification!
We worked with the company to help them to understand the issue, redesign their system and then gain certification with an accredited Certification Body.
Benefits of a UKAS accredited certification body
Simply put anyone can set up as a certification body but without UKAS to regulate this you have no assurance that a management system has been checked with the right frequency, to the right standards and with competent auditors.
What can you do?
For your certificate or your supplier’s certificate, look at the logo on the certificate and in addition to the certification body logo it must contain the UKAS ‘tick and crown logo’. If you are unsure either check the UKAS web or simply call QCS on 01236 734447 and we will be happy to help you.
The law is changing…
One problem is that until now, countries have been allowed to have more than one accredited body but from January 2010 in Europe, only one accredited body will be recognised per country and this will be UKAS.
If you need to check a European certificate see www.european-acreditation.org for more information.