ISO17025 Accreditation Not Required For Compliance

[Jerry Eldred]

Interesting point. I was just reading a new article in NCSLI news magazine, and one sentence was interesting .... "...Labs do not have to be accredited to claim compliance to the standard..."

So as an ISO17025 Accredited lab, does this mean that for example, if there is a high accuracy calibration service provider that "complies" to ISO17025 (I mean this in the most ethical of ways - absolutely not issues of trying to sneak anything in - I want to make proper measurements), is it permissible under the right circumstances to use calibrations from such a vendor as a contributor to a calibration within my scope of accreditation.

This is in an article about the new draft of ISO17025 being worked on.

This has always I thought been a clear line. Guess I need to revisit some of these details.

 

[Marcelo]

Anyone can comply and claim compliance with a standard. For several uses, this is enough. Accreditation, certification, and the like, usually comes from specific needs, and usually means that a third party will evaluate the compliance.

So as an ISO17025 Accredited lab, does this mean that for example, if there is a high accuracy calibration service provider that "complies" to ISO17025 (I mean this in the most ethical of ways - absolutely not issues of trying to sneak anything in - I want to make proper measurements), is it permissible under the right circumstances to use calibrations from such a vendor as a contributor to a calibration within my scope of accreditation.

SUre, unless there?s a need to use an accredited lab.

For example, in Brazil, INMETRO product certification requires the use of accredited labs to perform tests, it?s not enough to claim compliance only. For calibration purposes it really depends on what you need to comply with.