The Accreditation Procedure
InterAccreditation’s authority embodies and is accountable for all secondary processes as awarding accreditation, maintenance, expanding or limiting the accreditation’s domains, temporary suspension or permanent annulment.
InterAccreditation’s top management identifies as constant responsibilities the need for developing healthy business policies, taking into attentive consideration all accreditation decisions and submitting it to professional committees whose single responsibility is to take proper action in guiding the organization through the process of accreditation. Simultaneously, InterAccreditation’s management attends and conscientiously respects all aspects and characteristics of the legal arrangement previously established while assigning the ground rules of authority concerning the evaluation process.
InterAccreditation pledges for objectivity
Impartiality is the key-point to a successful and accurate evaluation process and InterAccreditation’s first priority in maintaining a balanced judgment while processing all the information required. InterAccreditation’s highly trained personnel, its strict elaborated policies and scrupulous accreditation means take no part in encouraging a certain organism to obtain accreditation faster, easier or more straightforward than another one. Complementary, through out our activity InterAccreditation’s accreditation committees never had o purpose in subjectively helping one organism over another and accordingly to our primary policies will never be subjected to any commercial, financial or any kind of influence that might disregard the evaluation results.
Another crucial aspect of our work is that InterAccreditation makes an imperative difference between the committees that supervise the two separate activities: the evaluation process and the actual awarding of the accreditation. For better and accurate results, for an uneventful process and, more important, for a precise and accurate intervention all InterAccreditation committees are well observed and closely monitored so that no unwanted or unfair influence can interfere with InterAccreditation’s procedures.
Legal Responsibility & Confidentiality Terms
InterAccreditation fully commits to preserving strictly for its own interest all information researched and discovered during and after the accreditation process as all the members and procedures of InterAccreditation’s committees or affiliated organisms are competent and adequate to conceal all the results, facts or evaluation status accordingly to legal consent.
Accordingly to present financial legislation InterAccreditation has already met all criteria regarding his economical status and can always prove that its activities and actions have no illicit consequence.
Human Resources
Due to InterAccreditation commitment to provide only high standards services, our team of evaluators, auditors and experts in various fields of activity has been fully trained and prepared to accomplish and understand every step of their assignment. Their officially recognized knowledge and studies, the strong level of liability and experience accumulated over the years all corroborate in precisely obeying the restrictions and guidelines laid down by standard procedure. Bound by legal obligation InterAccreditation’s team completely respects all the specific aspects of honoring confidentiality terms and literally obeys all the ante-required features.
Primarily, InterAccreditation has already established procedures and strategies for every situation or code in order to respond in a suitable way to each specific requirement. Therefore all accredited InterAccreditation’s assessors have the appropriate experience and work field for the designated process and all of them have relevant training in the mechanism of awarding accreditation. Plus for each specific accreditation request, a committee will approve each team of evaluators and auditors in order to perfectly match the needs of the certification body with the level of acquaintance regarding the field, the language and the level of knowledge of each team.
Secondarily, InterAccreditation has a strict procedural system that implies regularly inspections of its team members and various committees that have the imperative duty of supervising and evaluating in a systematical order evaluator’s decisions, the ways in which they conduct and fulfill the procedures or the process by witch each accreditation verdict is taken. Additionally, InterAccreditation’s standard system of achieving high performance includes a closely record of their team members, their performance, education and qualifications and consequently InterAccreditation has taken the important burden of regularly verifying and demanding up to date competence documentation and authorized certificates for each of their major skills.
Accreditation Process
InterAccreditation conformity assessments procedures are literally conformant to specific international legislation and imply using only actualized standards and codes. Also, beside the legislation responsibility, InterAccreditation promotes transparency for any adjustment or update that can interfere in the general requirements for obtaining accreditation, for every obligation and responsibility that InterAccreditation has or adds to its policy and of course for any documentation or detail regarding prices, rights or application procedures that are necessary during the accreditation process.
The first step of InterAccreditation’s accreditation process consists of a formal solicitation from a legal representative of the certification body seeking accreditation in which certain details have to be clearly specified as: the full name of the organization, legal status, corporate belonging, field of activity, the detailed address of all organism’s branches if applicable, technical resources, number of employees, an accurate request regarding the domain for which they seek accreditation and a formal agreement that they already met all the requirements that InterAccreditation demands in this phase.
Consequently, InterAccreditation constrains itself prior to the evaluation period to demand a precise description of the conformity assessment’s services and a complete list of all procedures for which it requires accreditation from InterAccreditation mentioning of course if the organization has or not a limited capability in certain domains. In addition, InterAccreditation requires from the certification body a copy of the quality manual as well as any other document that confirms the participation to a conference of session regarding competence testing.
During all accreditation process, as mentioned before, InterAccreditation takes the legal responsibility to inform its partners of any adjustment brought to the process of accreditation. To be more specific, InterAccreditation will notify immediately its client if it decides to subcontract the accreditation and fully commits to supervise any accreditation outcome of its subcontractor. Moreover InterAccreditation will attest and regularly check the competence of its subcontractor, of its human resources capabilities and its decision making process. And, the most important detail, InterAccreditation will obtain legal consent from its clients before subcontracting the accreditation process.
Preparing for evaluation
The primary episode of InterAccreditation’s evaluation begins when InterAccreditation evaluation committee designates an appropriate team of assessors and experts which have the suitable knowledge, experience and preparedness for the required domain and also, that are capable of collecting all the information necessary to the evaluation phase. Of course, if consented, InterAccreditation can demand a stage prior to evaluation in which the InterAccreditation team can raise awareness on the main inadequacies found and offer corrective guidelines on how to improve or even solve them without offering consultancy services.
InterAccreditation committees’ policy is very strict regarding the procedures by witch the team of assessors is designated. Some of the main requirements of InterAccreditation committees concern that the evaluators should have never provided consultancy services for the certification organism or none of the team members to have any connection or concurrent position with the client. Additionally, to prevent any scenery of conflict of interests, InterAccreditation’s evaluation committee sends prior to the evaluation phase a list with the entire names of assessors that will conduct the evaluation. According to InterAccreditation’s procedure if one or more of the assessors are rejected from objective reasons, another list will be submitted to the client in order to avoid any interference with the well functioning of the accreditation process.
In order to obtain an accurate evaluation result, InterAccreditation’s policies include first of all a document phase evaluation and an on sight supervision for each field of activity. The closely analysis of all the documents collected from the client leads to a specific sample examination if the client aggregates several activity domains. InterAccreditation commits to the fact that its team of evaluators will visit all the key locations and proceed with the sample evaluation in every one of those locations. Moreover to each of these sessions a representative number of employees will be monitored. The sample evaluation system for various key-activities will be conducted by InterAccreditation in different time periods established mutually by both parts of the accreditation process. Still InterAccreditation’s standard procedure embodies the possibility that if the assessors’ team find substantial irregularities in the document evaluation phase, InterAccreditation doesn’t have to go forward with the on sight assessment.
Analyzing preliminary evaluation findings
After assessing all information gathered during the evaluation stage, InterAccreditation’s evaluation team will make sure that the materials collected are sufficient in order for InterAccreditation to conclude the level of preparedness and conformity with InterAccreditation standards. Also, as soon as the on sight evaluation it’s over InterAccreditation’s assessors will submit an evaluation rapport to the client containing comments and observations but also irregularities found during the evaluation, irregularities that can be improved in order to meet InterAccreditation accreditation’s requirements.
Consequently, the certification body seeking accreditation has to respond to the comments made in the preliminary evaluation rapport and only when it commits to solve the anomalies found, InterAccreditation’s evaluation committee will follow up if the solutions proposed are suitable and if the applications of the solution are in fact put in practice. If not, InterAccreditation can request another evaluation whose main purpose is to assist the process of conforming to the accreditation’s requirements.
Only when the evaluation process is closed, InterAccreditation can go on with the next procedure which implies the evaluation rapport to be complete, InterAccreditation accreditation committee to have all the data from the on sight evaluation, a list with the names of the lead expert evaluator and the other evaluators, the accurate domain for which the accreditation is required or any other information that can help InterAccreditation’s committee determine whether or not the client has accomplished the conformity process.
If the certification body is already been accredited by another organism, InterAccreditation will analyze once more the results of the evaluation process in order to make sure that the conformity process was concluded accordingly to all international standards that have to be met.
The accreditation certificate
Once all required accreditation criteria are met, InterAccreditation will award the accreditation certificate which contains all the identifiers and logo of the accreditation organism, details concerning its activity domain such as the date when the accreditation expires, the number of locations for which the accreditation is awarded and the international standards that are met during the process. Also, if the organization seeking accreditation is an inspection body InterAccreditation will mention on the certificate the examination type usually applied, the domain and all the other inspections types for which accreditation has been awarded and any other international standards that have to be met in all future inspections. InterAccreditation will also mention on the certificate any other feature or specific item that attests the organism activity or essential conditions that have to be met during their future labor.
InterAccreditation’s procedure for appeals
InterAccreditation’s appeal committee has the duty to verify the validity of the appeal and only then investigate and decide if the subject of the appeal will suffer or not any changes. Meanwhile, the appeal committee will nominate one person to keep track of all further appeals coming from that organization and register all the decisions regarding that particular appeal.
Reevaluation and supervision
Our procedures and standards for reevaluating or supervising the activity of an organization in order to maintain its accreditation conduct to a series of further evaluations and on sight supervisions programmed in a mutual manner to a certain time period. Also, if the results of the reevaluation and supervision are not at all satisfactory, InterAccreditation can order a set of adjustments and only after they are put in practice, InterAccreditation will conclude whether or not the accreditation has to be renewal or its validity will be prolonged.
How to renewal, withdraw or expand your accreditation
In the remote case when an organization has failed in numerous situations to respect our demands and hasn’t exercised at all the corrections mentioned in the reevaluation phase, InterAccreditation will withdraw immediately its accreditation. In contrast, if an organism demands an accreditation renewal or needs accreditation for other activities not included in the previous one, InterAccreditation will provide all the necessary documentation and will explain the essential steps of the process.
The obligations of a certifying organism
Once InterAccreditation accreditation process is over and the organism has been offered accreditation it has to commit itself that, at least until the accreditation period comes to an end it will honor and perform the same level of competence and quality for all the services offered. Moreover, the certifying organism shouldn’t discredit in any way InterAccreditation accreditation and should mention at all times the specific domain for which it has received accreditation. Also in the case of any changes that might occur regarding the legal or juridical status, head management, key personnel, accreditation field or any other differences in company policies, InterAccreditation has to be noticed right away.
InterAccreditation’s obligations
A list with all InterAccreditation assessed organizations is available on our website. There you can access information regarding their field of activity, their local contacts and the validity of their accreditation. Also, InterAccreditation commits itself to notice all its collaborators if any adjustment in the requirements for obtaining accreditation occurs. As soon as this happens, InterAccreditation will send a written brief containing all the changes and the corrections that will be later applied in practice.
The accreditation and symbols
A certifying organism that has obtained InterAccreditation accreditation can use InterAccreditation’s marks and symbols on all reports and certificates obtained during the process of accreditation but only for those locations that have been mentioned in the certificate of accreditation. Still the certification body has to fully correspond to all InterAccreditation standards in order to use its symbols in media presentations, commercials or brochures and, as soon as the validity of the accreditation expires, it has to make sure the InterAccreditation symbols no longer appear in any of the advertising materials.
Complementary, InterAccreditation does not allow its accreditation to state the value and competence level of any of the personnel members, systems or final products of the company.