IANZ accreditation
your assurance of technical competence

your assurance of technical competence
THE IMPORTANCE OF TESTING AND INSPECTION
Accurate testing, measurement and inspection arecornerstones of a developed economy. They impact directlyon the quality of goods and materials. They also ensure
the safety of consumer products, the protection of ourenvironment, and the effectiveness of our healthcare
services. They are essential in monitoring the safety andreliability of utilities and transport systems, the purity offoods and beverages, and the reliability of public works andother constructions.
Given the importance of test and inspection results toGovernment and private sector decision makers, it iscritical that independent information is available about
the reliability of those results. Whilst many trades andprofessions are subject to regulatory or professional
control, the operation of a laboratories and inspection
bodies is largely uncontrolled.
ASSURANCE FOR REGULATORS
Government and regulatory agencies frequently rely on test
and inspection results in the performance of their duties.
So do local authorities and the civil and criminal justicesystems. Such agencies must ensure that their decisions
are based on accurate, reliable results from laboratories
of proven competence. Indeed, many authorities nowCompetenceOn-site inspection is essential to conﬁrm
compliance with standards and regulations

specify they will only accept results from laboratories andinspection bodies that are IANZ accredited. Other agencies
will now only provide funding for tests from laboratories
that are IANZ accredited.
The IANZ Accreditation Scheme provides access to a
multidisciplinary network of testing laboratories andinspection bodies of proven capability and expertise.
This is essential for those who monitor or regulate
activities or goods and materials, on the basis of test or
inspection results. There are now over 750 IANZ accredited
laboratories and 150 accredited inspection bodies in New
Zealand serving all sectors of the economy.
Today, most regulators will only allow results from IANZ
accredited laboratories and inspection bodies for use in
their area of responsibility. Instances of this are shown on
the table opposite.
AN ACCREDITED ORGANISATION

Conﬁdence
Accurate tests help protect our health and environment

Any organisation providing testing, measurement or
inspection services may apply for accreditation underthe Testing Laboratory Registration Act. The organisation
is subjected to a searching assessment of its expertise,facilities, resources, operations, procedures and quality
systems by a team of independent, technical experts
accompanied by an IANZ accreditation assessor. TechnicalGOVERNMENT RECOGNITION
The New Zealand Government, in 1972, recognised thecritical importance of accurate and reliable test results andmade provision for the registration of testing laboratories.
The Testing Laboratory Registration Act 1972 created astatutory body, the Testing Laboratory Registration Council, toperform this function.
The Council was among the ﬁrst in the world to introduce a
broad spectrum national laboratory accreditation scheme.
Virtually all developed economies have now establishedsimilar government or quasi-government programmes toidentify and formally accredit technically competent andreliable measurement, testing and inspection facilities.
The Council’s accreditation arm, International Accreditation
New Zealand, is New Zealand’s national accreditation
authority for laboratories, inspection bodies and radiology
services. IANZ is widely recognised in the international
accreditation community as one of the world leaders in thisﬁeld.
The Council, an autonomous Crown Entity under the Crown
Entities Act 2004, receives no funding from government,
being wholly dependent on fees for funding of its operations.

experts are selected for their personal expertise in thespeciﬁc ﬁeld involved. They are drawn from industry,
academic institutions, research associations, government
and private sector bodies in both New Zealand andAustralia.
When full compliance with the accreditation criteria isachieved, the organisation is formally accredited by IANZ
and may then be referred to as an Accredited Laboratory,
Accredited Radiology Service, Accredited Inspection
Body, or Accredited Calibration Laboratory,
as appropriate.
Accredited organisations are subjected to annual
reassessments to ensure that they continue to comply withthe accreditation criteria. More frequent reassessments arecarried out if necessary.
It should be noted that accreditation does not constitutea blanket endorsement of all of an organisation’sactivities. Accreditation is granted only for speciﬁc types
of work in which the organisation has demonstrated
its expertise. This work is deﬁned in the organisation’s
Scope of Accreditation which is published on the IANZ
website: www.ianz.govt.nz/directory. It is also printed ina schedule to each accredited organisation’s certiﬁcateof accreditation, copies of which should be available
from the organisations themselves.

Regulatory use of IANZ Accreditation
ACTIVITY ACCREDITEDRESPONSIBLE AUTHORITY

Testing of meat and dairy products for export

New Zealand Food Safety Authority

Testing of drinking water

Ministry of Health

Assessors of drinking water suppliers

Ministry of Health

Medical Testing

Ministry of HealthCalibrating electrical meters

Electricity Commission

Testing of gas cylinders and other dangerous goods

Environmental Risk Management Authority

Inspection of pressure equipment, cranes and passenger ropeways

Department of Labour

Inspections of pipelines and off-shore structures

Department of Labour

Testing of road aggregate

Transit New Zealand

Calibrating road speed devices

New Zealand Police

CT and MRI scanning

Accident Compensation Corporation

Building Consent Authorities

Department of Building and Housing

Testing of ﬁre sprinkler systems and alarms

Department of Building and Housing

Quarantine inspection

MAF Quarantine ServiceDetails of all accredited organisations are maintained
up-to-date, also on the IANZ website. A telephone enquiry
service is provided by IANZ for those who wish to identify
organisations that meet their speciﬁc needs or whowish to determine the accreditation status of particularorganisations. Please call (09) 525 6655 and ask for
Accreditation Services Administration.
Laboratory accreditation
Testing and calibration laboratories have been accreditedby IANZ since 1973, and were among the ﬁrst in the world
to be accredited. These laboratories are involved in testing
items of all manners essential for health, safety and trade.
Today, there are over 750 testing and calibration laboratories
accredited each year by IANZ, which represents over 90
percent of available laboratories in New Zealand. All areaccredited to international standards that are accepted in 49
economies throughout the world.
The types of laboratories accredited by IANZ include:
animal products; applied physics; biological, chemical,dairy, electrical, gas, mechanical, medical, water and wool
testing; metrology and calibration. The criteria used are:(a) NZS ISO/IEC 17025 General Requirements for theCompetence of Testing and Calibration Laboratories(b) NZS/ISO 15189 Medical Laboratories – ParticularRequirements for Quality and Competence
Inspection Body Accreditation
Inspection is an essential part of ensuring the operationalsafety of many items that the public use in their daily
lives. Safety of food is a prime example, as are cranes,
boilers and pressure vessels used in the workplace. The
competence of inspection services employed by local
authorities and other organisations to ensure regulatory
requirements are being met for these and other devices isassured by IANZ accreditation.

equipment, non-destructive tests, meat, dairy and otherfood, biosecurity and border control.
The criteria used by IANZ for accrediting inspection bodies
is AS/NZS ISO/IEC 17020 General Requirements for theAcceptance of Inspection Bodies standard. Building Consent
Authorities are also accredited as inspection bodies, tocriteria established by the Department of Building andHousing.
Radiology services accreditation
Radiology covers the medical imaging of patients to provide
information for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment
of disease or assessment of their health. Medical imaging
includes conventional diagnostic radiology as well as a wide
variety of specialised techniques.
IANZ Accreditation is applicable to all organisations
providing medical imaging. These include private radiology
services and those in the public system. With accreditation,
radiology services receive formal recognition of theorganisation’s technical competence after assessment of
their processes, resources, facilities, staff and other key
factors which relate to, and impact on, the quality of theradiological service provided.
The scopes of accreditation for radiology are in generalclassiﬁed according to medical imaging modalities. Thesegeneral classes include: bone densitometry, CT scanning,DSA, general radiography, mammography, MR Imaging,Nuclear medicine and ultrasound.
IANZ Accreditation for Radiology Services is in compliancewith the New Zealand Code of Radiological Management
Practice. This Code is modelled on the international
standard ISO/IEC 17025 General Requirements for theCompetence of Testing and Calibration Laboratories. It
covers all imaging procedures normally performed by aradiology service.

Inspection is the examination of a product design, product,service, process or plant; and determining their conformity
with speciﬁc requirements. Many types of inspection also
involve professional judgement for conformance against
standards and general requirements. In such cases,
the inspection body must demonstrate that it has thenecessary competence to perform the task to achieve IANZ
accreditation.

ACCREDITATION CRITERIAThere is a close relationship between inspection, testingand measurement. Inspection involves examinations byqualiﬁed personnel using techniques including:

Personnel°

Visual examination°

Visual comparison with standards (e.g. colourmatching)°

Dimensional checks°

Examination using gauges and instruments.

The various types of inspection bodies accredited by IANZinclude inspectors of: pressure equipment, cranes andpassenger ropeways, offshore structures, mechanicalAccreditation requires organisations to meet exacting
conditions of technical competence in critical areas of
their operations, facilities and procedures, as well as
demonstrating full compliance with the requirements of
the relevant international standard. The critical areas oftechnical competence are:

The organisation must be managed and staffed by personnel
with appropriate technical qualiﬁcations. Staff must also
have signiﬁcant experience in their ﬁelds of inspections
and testing, a thorough understanding of the scientiﬁcprinciples underlying their work and sound operationaland managerial skills. The evaluation of laboratory staff
expertise is a major component of the IANZ accreditation
process.
Accommodation and environment
Many measurement and test procedures must be carriedout under tightly controlled environmental conditions or insterile or electromagnetically screened accommodation.

Accreditation of an organisation is dependent upon its
accommodation and environmental controls found to beappropriate for its work.

reports in formats that meet international standards forsuch documents.

Inspection, test and measurement procedures

An accredited laboratory or inspection body must
implement a quality management system that is essentiallyin compliance with the requirements of ISO 9001.

Accreditation is available only for validated test andinspection methods that are known to produce reliable
results. An IANZ accredited organisation must implement
rigorous quality control procedures to demonstrate theongoing validity of their test and inspection methods.
It must also properly determine its uncertainties ofmeasurement and its limits of detection.
Test equipment
An accredited laboratory or inspection body must use test
and measuring equipment as speciﬁed in its validated
test methods. This equipment must be well maintained
and regularly calibrated. Such calibrations must, whereappropriate, be traceable to the New Zealand national
standards of measurement maintained by the Measurement
Standards Laboratory under the authority of theMeasurement Standards Act 1992.
Reference standards and materials
An accredited organisation must be equipped with anappropriate range of reference measurement standards andreference materials sufﬁcient to be able to demonstrate
the accuracy of its tests and measurements. Theseessential quality control materials must have demonstrated
traceability to appropriate international standards.

Quality management

ENDORSED REPORTS
IANZ encourages accredited organisations to makereference to their accreditation in reports, certiﬁcatesor other documents produced. A report carrying theIANZ accreditation logo (see below) or any combinationof the words “IANZ”, “IANZ Accredited”, “AccreditedOrganisation”, etc, is referred to as an IANZ endorsed
report. Such endorsed reports enjoy wide acceptance inNew Zealand, and overseas through a network of formalmutual recognition arrangements between IANZ andoverseas equivalents.
Accredited organisations may endorse reports as long as
they meet the criteria for accreditation. The rules forendorsement allow organisations to mix both accredited
and non-accredited results as long as the non-accredited
results are clearly marked as such.
Accreditation endorsement logos

Records and reports
An accredited laboratory or inspection body must maintaincomplete records of its tests and inspections and must issue

ACCREDITATION WORLDWIDE
It is the norm around the world (and mandated in theEuropean Union) that laboratory and inspection bodyaccreditation should not be subject to competitive orcommercial pressure. Accreditation is seen as a “publicgood”, national infra-structural activity that must havetechnical integrity as its primary motivator; not commercial
proﬁt.

Reliability
Consumer protection through reliable measurement

In most countries, the national accreditation authority is agovernment department or a quasi-government agency such
as International Accreditation New Zealand. An alternative
structure is for an accreditation authority to be established
as a private, not-for-proﬁt agency operating under aformal memorandum of understanding with government.
Australia’s national accreditation authority, NATA, follows
this model.

Mutual Recognition Arrangements
National accreditation authorities such as IANZ have theirperformance and standards monitored through a networkof multilateral mutual recognition arrangements with
the national accreditation authorities of other countries.
Such arrangements are established and then maintained
through an on-going programme of independent, external
evaluations of each accreditation authority’s operations.
Just as IANZ regularly participates in the evaluation ofother national accreditation schemes, so IANZ, in turn, isregularly evaluated by teams comprising representatives of
its multilateral arrangement partners.
Currently, IANZ has formal mutual recognition arrangementswith the national accreditation authorities of 48 othercountries. This is an ever expanding network of national
accreditation authorities, through which IANZ is able
to assist you to determine the accreditation status ofoverseas organisations and to specify the use of accredited
laboratories or inspection bodies in particular countries.
All accreditation authorities in these countries will accept
results from IANZ accredited laboratories and inspection
bodies on the same basis as if the results came from theirown accredited organisations.

List of MRA participating countries (August 2007)
ASIA PACIFICEUROPENew ZealandUnited Kingdom

Australia

IrelandIndonesia

Sweden

Malaysia

Finland

The Philippines

NorwaySingapore

The Netherlands

VietnamDenmark

ThailandBelgium

India

Germany

Hong Kong, China

Austria

People’s Republic of China

FranceChinese Taipei (Taiwan)

Switzerland

JapanSpain

Republic of Korea

PortugalInternational Accreditation New Zealand

AMERICAS

Italy

626 Great South Road, Ellerslie, Auckland 1051

CanadaLatvia

Private Bag 28908, Remuera, Auckland 1541

United States of America

Lithuania

MexicoPolandCuba

Estonia

Fax: 64 9 525 2266

BrazilSlovenia

Email: info@ianz.govt.nz
www.ianz.govt.nz

Argentina

Czech Republic

MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA

Slovak Republic

IsraelRomania

Egypt

GreeceSouth Africa

TurkeyA full list of accredited authorities worldwide is available
on www.ianz.govt.nz/International or a printed list can beobtained by emailing info@ianz.govt.nz.

Published by

Tel: 64 9 525 6655

IA 4, September 2007

ISBN 978-0-908611-01-0