Buyer Beware: Accredited certification or not?

In these difficult economic times, public sector organisations and large blue chips are increasingly demanding quality, environmental and health and safety management systems to be certificated by one of the more rigorous UKAS accredited certification bodies.

UKAS, the United Kingdom Accreditation Service is the only national accreditation agency recognised by government to assess organisations that provide evaluation services.

However, whilst accredited certification is not a legal requirement it has a number of potential benefits.  Independent research carried out by Databuild earlier this year (April 2009) suggests that 58% of the organisations surveyed stipulated accredited certification in their prequalification questionnaires, a trend mirrored by the public sector who confirmed that it is are looking to increase confidence in its supplier base by insisting on accredited certification.

UKAS suggest that the reasons for this can be traced to the 2007 Regulators’ Compliance Code which is a central part of the Government’s better regulation agenda.  The code aims to embed risk-based management thinking into the regulatory framework and a key component of this is via the enforcement of recognised accreditation systems.

However, it is not just large businesses and the government who see the value of accredited certification, organisations like the CBI, Federation for small businesses and the IOD all recommend accredited certification.

There are a number of agencies offering quick and cheap, non UKAS, certification and many organisations use their services only to find that they are not acceptable to their client base.

Mark Woods from Statius comments “Very sadly, we usually find at least one or two clients a year that have progressed down this road only to find that they have to start again implementing more robust procedures and practices that actually reflect their business and add real benefit.”.