Maintaining Accreditation
The ISO/IEC 17011 standard (Conformity Assessment – General requirements for accreditation bodies accrediting conformity assessment bodies) dictates that the accrediting body (in this case, ICAC) must conduct ongoing surveillance of the certification program during the period of accreditation.
In order to comply with this requirement, ICAC requires that the accredited body maintain membership in ICAC at a cost of $200 per year. As part of this membership, we will ask that your association participate in a meaningful way on a volunteer basis to assist others in becoming accredited at an affordable cost.
Each year ICAC will survey all accredited organizations to determine if any of the certification program processes and procedures have been altered in any substantial fashion. The cost associated with this annual surveillance is part of the annual ICAC membership fee. This will be accomplished through a self-assessment document submitted by member associations to the ICAC review committee on an annual basis.
If it is determined that substantial changes have taken place within your program during the previous year, then a site visit and evaluation may become necessary to determine if your program is still in compliance with ISO/IEC 17024.
The process for this re-evaluation will be similar to that of the initial evaluation. Typically the fee for the surveillance evaluation will be $1,000 plus travel expenses (barring unusual circumstances) and is only necessary if your program has undergone fundamental and/or substantial administration process changes during the 5-year accreditation period.
Once the re-evaluation has been conducted, and assuming successful completion, your certification program(s) will be re-accredited for an additional 5-year period (in other words, the clock begins again).
Even if there are no substantial changes within your program, the ISO/IEC 17011 standard requires that two site visits must take place during the five-year accreditation period (in other words, we can’t just take your word for it – we must go and see for ourselves that the program is still functioning as presented during the initial evaluation).
The mid-accreditation site visit will take place during the third year of accreditation. There is a $1,000 fee (plus travel and accommodations for one assessor) associated with this site visit.
