News

9 June 2017 is World Accreditation Day

Accreditation is the third-party independent evaluation of conformity assessment bodies against recognised standards (ISO 17000 series of standards and guides) to ensure their impartiality and competence. Conformity assessment bodies are organisations that carry out evaluation services such as certification, verification, inspection, testing and calibration.

Metrology and accreditation are closely linked on a regional and international level. EURAMET has a long history of collaboration with the European cooperation for Accreditation (EA). EA is an association of national accreditation bodies in Europe that are officially recognised by their national governments to assess and verify organisations that carry out evaluation services. If a supplier is accredited by one of the members in the EA network, its customers can have confidence in the competence, independence and impartiality of its conformity assessment work.

In 2005 EA and EURAMET signed a Memorandum of Understanding which is still in force to strengthen the links between accreditation and metrology in Europe. The goals of both organisations include cooperation to improve the comparability of calibration and test results and working together to provide guidance in the field of calibration.

This year's World Accreditation Day is focussing on how accreditation delivers confidence in construction and the built environment. It covers many disciplines throughout the building supply chain: Accredited testing, calibration, inspection and certification provide professionals in the construction industry with assurance that construction projects run efficiently, construction sites are safe and reliable materials are used. To explain how accreditation is involved in building and construction EA has published a video for World Accreditation Day.

EURAMET contributes to an improvement in construction and the built environment through its research programmes.
Examples can be found in case studies from completed joint research projects within EURAMET's European Metrology Research Programme:

• The EMRP project 'Novel mathematical and statistical approaches to uncertainty evaluation' generated new faster calculations for fire safety evaluations. Ensuring public safety in shopping malls, car parks and theatres in the event of a fire is an essential part of building safety regulations. Fire simulation modelling is complex with hundreds of possible parameters that effect how a fire generates heat or spreads. Numerous complex simulations are required, and each may take weeks of computer time to reach a conclusion on whether a building is fire safety compliant. Speeding this process whilst upgrading the number of inputs that models can handle in a single iteration would improve fire safety in large public buildings. read more >>
  
  
• The EMRP project 'Traceability for computationally-intensive metrology' has developed a calibration process for 3D simulation software. Engineering projects - from the world's tallest skyscrapers to new transport infrastructure - use complex 3D models to assess safety, efficiency and cost effectiveness. To provide the confidence needed by such safety critical industries, 3D simulation software needs a standardised method for checking their accuracy. read more >>
  
  
• The EMRP project 'Novel mathematical and statistical approaches to uncertainty evaluation' developed new statistical models to better estimate the effect of flow disturbance on meter measurements. Understanding how fluids move around pipes, for example in heating systems, is vital for improving efficiency and safety. But fluid movement in pipes is inconsistent which makes measuring it hard. Better models are needed to understand how bends in pipes change the flow, so that reliable corrections can be made to the flow meters used to make these important measurements. read more >>
  
  
• Additionally, EURAMET provides numerous calibration guides on a broad range of topics >>

The initiative of World Accreditation Day was established by the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), to promote the value of accreditation. They give more details of how accreditation delivers confidence in construction and the built environment on the IAF and ILAC websites.