ISO 17025 – Changes to the standard

ISO 17025 specifies the general requirements for the competence to carry out tests and/or calibrations including sampling dictated by international methods. The standard identifies the high technical competence and management system requirements that guarantee your test results and calibrations are consistently accurate.

However, ISO 17025 was published in 2005 and since then the laboratory environment has changed significantly. Heribert Schorn, Convenor of the committee, states, “The revision was needed to cover all the technical changes, technical developments and developments in IT techniques that the industry has seen since the last version. Additionally, the standard takes into consideration the new version of ISO 9001.”

This standard is of high significance for the IEC Conformity Assessment Community as it outlines the basic requirements for testing within all Conformity Assessment Schemes and Programmes operating within the IECEE, IECEx, IECQ and IECRE Conformity Assessment Systems.

The standard’s revision process has now reached the Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) stage, the last stage of development before publication.

A few of the main changes include:

• A stronger focus on information technologies, the standard now recognises and incorporates the use of computer systems, electronic records and the production of electronic results and reports.
• The terminology has been updated to be more in step with today’s world and the fact that hard-copy manuals, records and reports are slowly being phased out in favour of electronic versions. Examples include changes to the International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM) and alignment with ISO/IEC terminology.
• A new structure has been adopted to align the standard with the other existing ISO/IEC conformity assessment standards such as the ISO/IEC 17000 series on conformity assessment.

Developed by ISO and IEC, the new version of ISO/IEC 17025 will replace the 2005 version and is scheduled for publication at the end of this year.