Accreditation of a testing laboratory: difficulties, advantages, competence and quality criteria

The accreditation of a testing laboratory requires a considerable amount of energy in several fields. It involves monitoring the technical resources and ensuring the competence of the human resources. It implies a constant management of the documents and solving the possible problems resulting from an unsuitable organization. As regards testing laboratories, the regulations that establish the general criteria is the UNI CEI EN 45001 norm, which provides for the management of the equipment, the technical and human resources and the optimization and documentation of the test methods. It is crucial that the whole staff are involved and aware of their decisive role and responsibility for implementing and constantly improving the Quality System. Important aspects to implement the Quality System are the following: management of testing equipment, documentation of test methods and drafting the test reports.