Reading a laboratory accreditation

ISO/IEC 17025 is the international standard for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories. It is the one that matters when a laboratory produces a result or a calibration certificate.

ISO/IEC 17020 covers bodies performing inspection, which is a different activity: examining a product, process or installation and reporting conformity against requirements. A body may hold one, the other, or both, and holding one says nothing about competence in the other.

ISO/IEC 17025

Testing and calibration laboratories

ISO/IEC 17020

Inspection bodies

ISO/IEC 17065

Product certification bodies

A laboratory is never accredited in general. It is accredited for specific measurements, on specific matrices, over specific ranges, with a stated measurement capability. That list is the scope annex, and it is a separate document from the certificate.

A certificate on a wall tells you a laboratory holds accreditation. Only the annex tells you whether it holds accreditation for the thing you are about to send.

Ask for the scope annex, not the certificate. The certificate is the easy half.

Ask which accreditation body issued it, and check the certificate number on that body’s public register rather than taking a PDF at face value. In Saudi Arabia that is the Saudi Accreditation Center.

Then ask whether your specific parameter, matrix and range appear on the annex; whether the certificate is currently valid, with dates; and whether the work will actually be done in house or subcontracted — and if subcontracted, to whom and under whose accreditation.

1

Which body issued it — and is it on their public register?

2

Is my parameter, matrix and range on the annex?

3

Are the dates current?

4

In house or subcontracted, and to whom?

Laboratories legitimately perform work outside their accredited scope. It becomes a problem only when it is presented as though it were inside — an accreditation symbol on a report covering a determination that is not on the annex.

The honest arrangement is straightforward: the report states what was done and under which method, and does not carry an accreditation mark on lines the accreditation does not cover. If you cannot tell from a report which lines are accredited, that is worth asking about.

Our own certificates and the full accredited scope annex are published on this site, line by line, with range and capability, including the fields that are not on it. No competitor in this market publishes theirs at all.

That is not generosity. A scope you can read is the only version of this claim that is worth anything to a buyer.