International Cooperation

As president of RAB, Lofgren was recruited to speak at an ISO 9000 conference sponsored by Chemical Week magazine in January 1993. He suggested that the principals of the three other accreditation bodies then in operation also be invited to speak.

Lofgren had been looking for an opportunity to get together with Harry Gundlach of RvC, Paul Hewlett of NACCB, and John Hulbert of the Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand (JAS-ANZ). When all agreed to be speakers, Chemical Week arranged for them to meet one afternoon and invited them to report the results of the meeting to a plenary session of the conference attendees the following day.

Additional participants in the January 28 meeting included Stratton, Reuben Autery, then chair of ANSI's Board Committee for Conformity Assessment, and representatives of the Standards Council of Canada, which was about to begin operations. Observers from Japan and Mexico and from the Office of U.S. Trade Representative were also present.

Lofgren distributed a list of 12 issues of concern he had compiled during the previous months as a proposed agenda. It was adopted along with three additional topics as the meeting agenda. The discussion was lively but it became apparent that consensus would not be reached on even a few of the issues during the meeting. There was, however, enthusiastic agreement that the group should continue its discussions with the goal of achieving worldwide equivalence of accreditation activities.

The name International Accreditation Forum was adopted to identify the group, its scope, and its purpose. Because many of the participants were members of ISO/CASCO Working Group 8, they agreed to meet in conjunction with WG 8 meetings, held twice a year in Geneva, Switzerland.

Eventually, IAF became more than a forum for discussion. Its functions included interpreting the requirements of the ISO/CASCO guidance documents, codifying those interpretations, and evaluating the conformance of accreditation bodies to the requirements and interpretations.

On January 22, 1998, RAB was among the first 13 accreditation bodies to sign the IAF multilateral recognition agreement (MLA) for quality management systems. There are now 42 signatory accreditation bodies. RAB was also among the 20 accreditation bodies who signed the environmental management systems MLA in October 2004, which now has 35 signatories.

The first MLA was the culmination of a series of peer evaluations in which the procedures and operating practices of each accreditation body were assessed by skilled evaluators from to other peer bodies. Participants were evaluated to the IAF MLA document, which incorporated ISO/IEC Guide 61, the internationally accepted criteria for the operation of accreditation bodies.

In the years since IAF's founding, RAB and subsequently the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board have continued to participate and undergo periodic peer evaluations to give assurance of ongoing conformance with international requirements. This process provides an added level of oversight for the system of accredited third-party management systems certification.

Today, ANAB vice president Randy Dougherty is the chair of IAF. "As chair of IAF, my top priority is and always will be the credibility of accredited conformity assessment," Dougherty said.

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