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About the IAF MLA

Contact details of the Accreditation Bodies and Regional Accreditation Groups which are signatories to the MLA are listed here.

 

About IAF MLA

Accreditation Body and Regional Accreditation Group Members of IAF are admitted to the IAF MLA only after a stringent evaluation of their operations by a peer evaluation team which is charged to ensure that the applicant complies fully with both international standards and IAF requirements. Once an accreditation body is a signatory of the IAF MLA, it is required to recognise certificates and validation and verification statements issued by conformity assessment bodies accredited by all other signatories of the IAF MLA, with the appropriate scope.

The IAF MLA consists of a five level arrangement, with levels 2 and 3 constituting main scopes and levels 4 and 5 constituting sub-scopes. More information on the structure of the MLA can be found in IAF PL 3: Policies and Procedures on the IAF MLA Structure and for Expansion of the Scope of the IAF MLA, and the current status of the IAF MLA is available in IAF MLA Status.

In the IAF MLA Status document, some normative documents are highlighted in red to identify that these documents are currently under transition.

The IAF MLA relies heavily on the MLAs of Recognized Regional Accreditation Groups, which include:

These groups perform the majority of peer evaluation activities, not IAF.

To gain confidence in the work of Recognised Regional Accreditation Groups, IAF evaluates and accepts the process and outcomes of their MLAs for main scopes such as ISO/IEC 17021-1 (Management Systems) and ISO/IEC 17065 (Product) and related sub-scopes.

IAF encourages its Accreditation Body and Regional Accreditation Group Members to join the MLA as soon as they have passed a rigorous evaluation process to ensure that their accreditation programs are of a world standard. The consequence of joining the IAF MLA is that conformity assessment certificates and statements issued within the sub-scopes of the IAF MLA by conformity assessment bodies accredited by an accreditation body IAF MLA signatory can be recognised in the worldwide IAF program.

Recognised Regional Accreditation Groups are evaluated at regular intervals by IAF. IAF Accreditation Body Members who are signatories of the Recognized Regional Accreditation Groups’ MLAs may be accepted into the IAF MLA for recognised programs.

Contact details of the accreditation bodies and Recognised Regional Accreditation Groups which are signatories to the MLA are listed on the IAF Members pages. Those members which are signatories are denoted by “Date Admitted to the MLA”.

Details of the signatories of the IAF MLA programs at the dates shown are listed in the following document: IAF MLA Committee Members (MLA Member List) including MLA Signatories and associated scopes