Our Mango partner Andrew Thornhill from IRM Systems explains the ISO Eco System.
He answers these questions when getting certified to an ISO standard:
- Who are the different organisations involved?
- What’s their role?
- Where do they fit in?
Video Transcription
1. What is a Certification Body (CB)
If you’ve developed a management system and you want to be certified, the first step is to identify a Certification Body.
The job of the CB is to audit you against each and every requirement in the standard (ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and/or ISO 45001).
If you pass the audit, the CB will issue you a certificate to acknowledge that you have met all the requirements of the standard.
2. What is an Accreditation Body?
When you are approaching a CB, find one that is accredited by the Accreditation Body (AB) in your region. For example that might be UKAS in the UK, or in Australia and New Zealand, JAS-ANZ.
An AB accredits the CB by auditing and evaluating their processes and procedures for delivering the certification services.
That’s about making sure there is a certain amount of integrity and rigour that the CB takes in how they plan and conduct your external certification processes.
So check the UKAS or JAZ-ANZ websites to check the CB is accredited to audit your business.
3. What is ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation)?
The body that writes the standards is ISO, International Organisation for Standardisation.
They are simply a standard writing body. It has its members drawn from different parts of the world.
They form different committees to either write, review and/or revise different standards. For example as ISO 9001 was revised in 2015.
Now the role of those committees and ISO as an organisation, is to write a standard that is clear on the terminology and is fit for purpose, so it can be applied in different parts of the world.
Takeaways
- Identify a CB.
- Check to see that they are accredited in your region.
- Know that ISO is a standards writing organisation.
- The ISO standards are written with clear instructions and can be applied all over the world
