Organisations applying for accreditation and accredited bodies must comply with the requirements of accreditation standards. The bodies must also take into account all guidelines, instructions and principles published by FINAS and the international organisations EA, ILAC and IAF that apply to material aspects of their activities. The bodies must comply with the requirements of all publications specified as mandatory guidelines among the abovementioned publications. Guidelines from different stakeholder groups may also be used in the maintenance and development of operations. This page includes information on the accreditation requirements and the supporting guidelines on all aspects of accreditation.
Accreditation Requirements
Mandatory guidelines
Mandatory guidelines for each field of accreditation can be found on the pages presenting the fields of accreditation.
EA’s guidelines 2/13 and 2/15 describe requirements in situations where the body has offices abroad and has a flexible scope of accreditation.
Guidelines
Examples of guidelines for the field of accreditation can be found on the presentation pages of the fields of accreditation. The different guidelines can be reviewed on the EA, ILAC and IAF publication websites. EA maintains a list of accreditation guidelines (EA-INF/01 List of EA Publications and International Documents). Guidelines and guiding documents are also published by the Advisory Committee on Metrology (in Finnish), Eurachem, Euralab and EURAMET, among others.
FINAS Leaflets
Leaflets by FINAS provide more detailed information about the accreditation process and the principles of confidential operations.
Policy documents
The purpose of the policy documents published by FINAS is to clarify the application of the accreditation requirements in practice. The policy documents have been prepared by VANK-P (the Advisory Committee for Conformity Assessment Matters, Subcommittee for Accreditation Matters) together with national experts and stakeholders. The principles agreed in the international cooperation organisations of accreditation bodies (EA, ILAC and IAF) have been taken into account in the preparation.
An update of the policy documents A5–A11 is currently ongoing (April 2020).