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What is accreditation?

Accreditation is an endorsement of a conformity assessment body's competence, credibility, independence and integrity in carrying out its conformity assessment activities.

Accreditation is an endorsement of a conformity assessment body’s (CAB’s) competence, credibility, independence and integrity in carrying out its conformity assessment activities.

Accreditation and certification are not the same thing

In everyday language the terms accreditation and certification are often used interchangeably. In the conformity assessment industry, however, these terms have very different and specific meanings.

ISO’s formal definition of accreditation is “third party attestation related to a conformity assessment body conveying formal demonstration of its competence to carry out specific conformity assessment tasks.” Certification is “third party attestation related to products, processes, systems or persons.” (ISO/IEC 17000)

TQC only accredits organisations that provide certification and/or inspection services. These organisations are known as conformity assessment bodies, or CABs.

CertificationAccreditation
Attests toA product, process, system or personThe body that carries out that attestation
Carried out byA certification bodyAn accreditation body
AnswersDoes this system meet ISO 9001?Is this body competent to decide that?
Five steps: a standard is published, a company builds a system to meet it, a certification body audits and certifies, TQC assesses that certification body, and anyone can check the certificate number.
Where accreditation sits in the chain. Every link is checkable from the outside — that is the point of it.

What accredited CABs do

Accredited CABs provide certification and inspection services to organisations. Common schemes that CABs certify are quality management systems (QMS) based on the ISO 9001 standard, and environmental management systems (EMS) based on the ISO 14001 standard.

  • ISO 9001:2015 — Quality management systems
  • ISO 14001:2015 — Environmental management systems
  • ISO 45001:2018 — Occupational health & safety management systems
  • ISO 22000:2018 — Food safety management systems
  • ISO/IEC 27001:2022 — Information security management systems
  • ISO 13485:2016 — Medical devices — quality management systems
  • ISO 50001:2018 — Energy management systems

Have a question about accreditation?

Tell us what your organisation does and we will tell you which route applies. Contact us