Laboratory Accreditation Certificate with no Expiration Date

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#1
In my recent travels I encounted a Perry Johnson Laboratory Accreditation certificate for an independent lab. The cert had no expiration date. Appended to the cert was this from PJLA:
This letter is to confirm that you have successfully completed your accreditation assessment. A certificate has now been granted and posted on our website. As you are aware, PJLA will no longer be issuing expiration dates on our certificates. Your certificate # [Redacted] will remain valid as long as you continue to maintain your annual assessments and reaccreditation assessments as stated in your customer agreement with PJLA. At this time, we have confirmed that your annual assessments will be conducted during the month of March each calendar year. This will include an interim surveillance assessment and a full system reassessment to be completed by March 2015. Once your reassessment is conducted and approved by our accreditation committee a revised status letter will be provided to you. Please allow PJLA at least 120 days from your assessment due date to issue this letter.
Please feel free to release this letter to any interested parties as confirmation of your certificate validity. Also, please remind them that your certificate is posted on our website at all times.
Any changes in regards to your accreditation status will be reflected on our website.
Is this a legitimate practice?
 
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Ajit Basrur

Staff member
Admin
#2
This does raise some concerns but since PJLA is an ILAC/MRA Signatory Body Accredited Laboratory, I am not sure if there is some guidance from the ILAC ?
 

WCHorn

Rubber, Too Glamorous?
Trusted Information Resource
#4
SAE/PRI tried that a few years ago for their NADCAP. Folks didn't want to register on the Eauditnet.com web site just to see expiration dates; PRI went back to citing expiration dates on their certs shortly afterward.

It reduces registrar cost, but it adds a step for the laboratory's customer to verify the validity of the cert. We'll see if the practice sticks for PJLA.
 
M

MotorCityQuality

#5
In my experience, PJR isn't a very reputable company, there are articles in this forum describing their reputation, so I won't rehash here.

In practicality, what good is a certification document when the reader cannot be sure if the certification is valid? What's the incentive to keep up your 17025 system when it is much cheaper to pass around the old certification document, since it never expires?

Further, if you use this company for third party audits, how do you know they've "continue(d) to maintain your annual assessments and reaccreditation assessments as stated in your customer agreement with PJLA"? The undated certification document certainly doesn't give you a clue. At the very least, the certification document should be supplied with the corresponding "revised status letter", as proscribed in your quote above.

Regardless of the rules of reporting certificates, you still have the authority to accept/deny those types of documents... and for what it's worth, I'd deny them.
 

Hershal

Metrologist-Auditor
Staff member
Super Moderator
#6
In my recent travels I encounted a Perry Johnson Laboratory Accreditation certificate for an independent lab. The cert had no expiration date. Appended to the cert was this from PJLA:

Is this a legitimate practice?
Yes, it is.

PJLA is not the first to either not include or to remove expiration dates. ILAC or a Recognized Region will review the policy and implementation at the next Evaluation, but the concept is valid under ISO/IEC 17011.

The artificial expiration date typically results in extension(s) having to be granted, and possibly numerous certs. All that requires time and therefore money, which is passed to the lab and then to the customer.

Those of us who work for ABs taking this position realize that many organizations need such artificial dates for their system, but direct the customers to the websites to verify the validity of the lab.

Hope this helps.
 
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