Accreditation of Validation and Verification
INAB offers accreditation to EN ISO/IEC 17029:2019 “Conformity assessment - General requirements for validation and verification bodies”, which is a standard containing general principles and requirements for validation and verification bodies. It addresses the need for accreditation in the area of validation and verification activities.
Validation and verification are understood to be a confirmation of reliability of information declared in claims. Other terms in use for the object of assessment by validation and verification are ‘statement’, ‘declaration’, ‘assertion’, ‘prediction’ or ‘report’.
Validation is a ‘statement of plausibility’ whereas verification is a ‘statement of truthfulness’
Claims related to greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. according to ISO 14064-3), environmental labelling, product declarations and footprints (e.g. according to ISO 14020 and ISO 14040, such as the environmental product declaration), sustainability or environmental reporting (e.g. according to ISO 14016). Other potential new applications could include claims relating to construction technology, energy management, financial management, industrial automation systems, software and systems engineering, artificial intelligence, information technology, healthcare products and medical devices, machine safety, safety and design engineering, and social responsibility.
INAB Accreditation Symbol
The Irish National Accreditation Board strongly mandates accredited organisations to use the accreditation symbol on their reports or certificates.
The accreditation symbol, ownership of which is vested in INAB, is a combination of the Board’s logo in association with the registration number and the accreditation standard. Reference is also made to the organisation’s scope of accreditation.
The use of the symbol is subject to strict criteria laid down in the INAB R1 Regulations.
Application for accreditation to ISO/IEC 17029:2019
Under Regulation (EC) No. 765/2008, INAB may only properly accredit bodies that establish in Ireland. However, INAB is not currently a signatory to the EA or IAF multi-lateral agreements (MLAs) for accreditation to ISO/IEC 17029:2019. (A multilateral agreement is a signed agreement between EA Members whereby the signatories recognize and accept the equivalence of the accreditation systems operated by the signing members, and the reliability of the conformity assessment results provided by Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs) accredited by the signing members. It makes the objective ‘Accredited once, accepted everywhere’ effective).
Interim measures are in place to ensure that those seeking accreditation to this standard are accommodated. These measures are described in GD05, which is available in INAB Documents.
Queries relating to accreditation is this area should be submitted via the ‘Contact Us’ feature on the INAB website.
