ES Digital Global Assessment Guide - Flipbook - Page 11
Requirements for internal and external resources necessary to conducting product certification.
Process requirements for application, review, evaluation, certification decisions, documentation
and surveillance.
Management system requirements that addresses document control, management review and
internal audits.
Accrediting bodies must keep records on the scope of accreditation for every certifying body that they
accredit. This helps well-informed consumers verify the scope before using an organization’s listing
certificates or evaluation reports and prevents certifying bodies from evaluating products to standards
or criteria that are not in their scope of accreditation.
CONFIDENCE MATTERS
Product approval is a matter of confidence. Confidence in the codes and standards, confidence in the
certification body, confidence in the scheme of the certification body, and confidence in the AHJs who
are approving building products for installation.
Benefits of Accreditation
Accreditation enhances product certifications’ reliability and promotes consistency. The minimum
process, however, may not be enough to approve products for installation.
The standard used for accreditation of certification bodies, namely ISO/IEC 17065 states, “The
requirements against which the products of a client are evaluated shall be those contained in specified
standards and other normative documents.” It then references ISO/IEC 17007 as the standard that
contains guidance for developing normative documents. The aforementioned contains general
guidelines; however, there are variety of methods to use these guidelines, and that is why not all
normative documents have the same quality and go through the same rigor.
In addition to the use of consensus standards, ICC-ES develops normative documents for innovative
products. Acceptance Criteria (AC) and Listing Criteria (LC) are developed by technical staff in
consultation with the report applicant and with input from interested parties.
Not all Conformity Assessment Bodies Are Equal
ICC-ES evaluates products to the International Codes published by the International Code Council.
Such codes undergo a very rigorous process and hence ensure thoroughly vetted content. Moreover,
ICC-ES is one of the very few certification bodies that reviews products to codes adopted by
jurisdictions in addition to the standards and normative documents. This is to further ensure
compliance with local and state codes before approval for installation.
If the accreditation requirements are followed properly, the result will yield high quality certification by a
competent accredited certification body such as ICC-ES. This is true for testing and inspection activities
as well. Accredited testing and inspection agencies such as ICC NTA and ICC-PEI are highly qualified to
conduct testing and inspection as a result of completing a rigorous accreditation process.
The scheme matters. As mentioned earlier, scheme is a set of rules and procedures that describe the
object of conformity assessment. A certification scheme is specifically defined in ISO/IEC 17067 as a
“certification system related to specified products, to which the same specified requirements, specific
rules and procedures apply.” Although in general the set of rules of procedures used by conformity
assessment bodies may look the same from far, the detail of the scheme is what sets one conformity
assessment body apart from another.
BUILDING SAFETY, BUILDING CONFIDENCE WORLDWIDE
There is more to having confidence in certified
products, namely:
The quality of codes, standards or
normative documents used
The details of the certification scheme
Knowledge and expertise of AHJs