Meeting of the EA Laboratory Committee

21st March 2008 - 15th meeting of the Laboratory Committee (EA LC) of the European Cooperation for Accreditation (EA) was held in Athens in the period between 12th March and 13th March 2008 and was organised by the National Accreditation Board of Greece (ESYD).

A workshop on the subject of “Implementation of requirements laid down in Regulations of the European Commission, Directives, Guidelines laid down by the accreditation bodies as accreditation requirements for laboratories” was held as a part of the Committee meeting.

A newly appointed Chairman of the Committee, C. Waddington (FINAS), and the vice-Chairman, A. Steinhorst (DACH), attended the meeting together with the new members of the Management group EA LC.

The final draft of the document entitled “Policy of Accreditation Bodies as regards the Frequency of Participation in PT schemes” was presented during the meeting, as one of the methods to ensure trust in the quality of testing/calibration results.

A document entitled “Assessing Laboratory Staff Competence” was finalised and will be available to all members of the EA LC whereby the recommendations on how to use it during assessment process or when providing training to assessors of accreditation bodies will be defined.

Members of the EA LC Committee were, among other things, informed about the amended version of the draft ILAC Guideline G18 document for determining the scope of accreditation of testing laboratories. The said Guideline will be under discussion at the autumn meeting of the EA LC Committee.

The workshop reviewed the implementation of the requirements laid down in the EU Regulation mirroring accreditation requirements. Laboratories that have been notified in the EU Member States, as well as all other accredited laboratories are obliged to meet the said requirements in all areas of their business activities, as well as methods allowing for the fulfilment thereof and methods to determine accreditation scopes in those cases were the main topic of the workshop.

The following representatives of the Accreditation Board of Serbia attended the EA LC meeting and workshop: Dragan Pušara, MSc, Deputy Director of the ATS, and Natalija Jovičić Zarić, MSc, the ATS representative on the EA LC.