Bulletin number: 2017-34
 

Action required

Accredited Management Systems Certification Bodies are instructed to note the IAF Resolution below. All accreditation bodies, including SCC, have supported and must follow this resolution.

Affected customers

All MSAP customers

Background

Earlier this year. SCC reached out to its accredited Management Systems Certification Bodies to enquire into their progress in transitioning their clients to the new versions of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. Many other accreditation bodies made similar enquiries, and based on the responses received around the world, there is a concern amongst the conformity assessment community that many organizations will not be certified to the new standards in advance of the September 15^th, 2018 deadline (IAF currently estimates that only 25% of organizations have been certified to the new standards thus far).

Therefore, ISO and IAF have introduced another condition to the transition period issued in the form of a resolution  to ensure that all necessary audits happen in time to transition certified organizations:

“As the three-year transition for ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 moves into its final year, IAF (the global association for developing the principles and practices for the conduct of conformity assessment) has passed a resolution that as of 15 March 2018, conformity assessment bodies must conduct all ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 initial, surveillance and recertification audits to the new versions - ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015.

This resolution continues the efforts of IAF, its accreditation body members, stakeholder members of IAF and accredited conformity assessment bodies, to encourage those who need to upgrade to the new versions of the world’s leading management system standards.

Any organisations who need to move to the new version of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 should contact their conformity assessment body as soon as possible to make arrangements for their audit. Further information on transition can be found on ISO 9001 here and ISO 14001 here.

As noted in the joint ISO/IAF Communiqué on 15 September 2017 to mark one year to the transition deadline, the new versions of ISO 9001 and 14001 make very logical progressions from previous versions, delivering standards which address the key issues for both today and the future. The new ISO 9001 promotes enhanced leadership involvement in the management system, introduces risk-based thinking and aligns the quality management system policy and objectives with the strategy of the organisation. The changes in ISO 14001 focus on key issues such as protecting the environment improving environmental performance, lifecycle thinking and organisations’ environmental leadership.

Note that failure to achieve certification to the 2015 standard by the deadline means that your certification is no longer valid and this may affect your ability to supply to all markets.”

New requirements

SCC assessors will be verifying compliance to the resolution as stated above, and will raise non-conformities, as appropriate, if they find evidence that Certification Bodies have not followed this directive.

Deadline

As stated above

Questions?

Please contact Cynthia Milito, Acting Vice President, Accreditation Services, at cynthia.milito@scc.ca or +1 613 238 3222 ext. 489 for more information.