General Requirement of IA-CB for Conformity Assessment Bodies:

1. The IA-CB shall verify that the CB can demonstrate that all personnel involved in performing certification functions have the required competence.
2. The IA-CB shall verify that the CB has defined its certification process and the intended results to be achieved for each certification function. The AB’s evaluation of the CB’s competence shall be based on:
a. the CB’s documented process for determining competence criteria;
b. the outcomes of the process for determining competence criteria;
c. the CB’s evaluations of its personnel; and
d. Taking account of the intended results of each certification function and whether, or not, these have been achieved.
3. The certification functions for which the IA-CB shall verify that the CB has determined competence criteria, include, but are not limited to, the following:
a. Application review (see example in 3.5 below);
b. Establishing the audit program;
c. Scheduling of audits;
d. Allocation of audit teams;
e. Auditing and reporting;
f. Report reviews and certification decisions; and
g. Maintenance of certification.
4. The AB shall verify that the CB has determined competence criteria for:
a. Management overseeing the certification process;
b. Members of its committee for safeguarding impartiality;
c. Personnel performing internal audits; and
d. Personnel responsible for evaluating and monitoring the competence and performance of personnel performing certification functions.
5. The AB shall regard objective evidence of the CB achieving the intended results for all certification functions (see Annex A of this document) as an indication of the effectiveness of its processes for determining and evaluating competence. The IA-CB shall regard objective evidence of the CB failing to achieve intended results for any certification functions as an indication that the processes for determining and evaluating competence may be ineffective.
Note: The failure of the CB to achieve the intended results for a particular certification function could also be an indication that the CB’s procedures for that function are ineffective or have not been implemented.
For example, in the case of the application review, to determine that the CB has competent audit team members, it can allocate and to determine the audit time, the AB shall verify that the CB:
a. has defined the intended results (see (d) below) for this function of the certification process;
b. has defined effective competence criteria for the personnel performing this function
c. can provide objective evidence that the staff performing this function have demonstrated that they meet the competence criteria; and
d. that the output from this function of the certification process has achieved the intended results, by:
i providing evidence that the technical area(s) of the organisation to be audited has/have been correctly allocated;
ii providing evidence that the assigned auditors have the required competence for the appropriate technical area(s); and
iii providing evidence that adequate time has been allocated for the audit, based on the review of information provided by the applicant/certified client and from previous audits.
6. The AB shall assess the process and procedures established by the CB to determine competence criteria and to evaluate competence to verify that personnel evaluated as competent consistently achieve the intended results for all certification functions.
7. The AB shall verify that the CB has appropriate records of the implementation of its processes for determining and evaluating competence and that the CB can demonstrate its evaluation methods are effective and achieve intended results consistently.