When getting ISO certified, one of the most important steps is found at the end of the process, that of choosing a certification body. You see, when you implement an ISO standard in an organization, you have to get certified. This has to be done through an accredited certification body.
In this blog, you can find the link to the video where Luke Desira gladly explains all that you need to know when working with certification bodies. Moreover, if you prefer reading, you can find the transcript here.
Summary of the things you need to look out for when working with Certification Bodies:
- Always work with an accredited certification body, or else your certificate will carry no value.
- The more established the certification body, the higher the price.
- The size of your organization and industry are the two most important factors that are considered when certification bodies charge you.
- You must carry out a Management Review Meeting, an Internal Audit and welcome the certification body to do an external audit every year.
Video Transcript for Certification Bodies
Hi, in this video I wanted to give you more information about the process of working with a certification body. So after you have implemented your management system within your organization, you will need to look for a certification body.
And the first question that would pop up in your mind would be who to get certified with. So there are different certification bodies that you can work with and the most important thing that you have to consider is that you have to work with an accredited certification body.
What does this mean? There are different certification bodies in the world. Some are based in Malta, others are based in other countries. For example, in Italy, and in England, different countries have different certification bodies. Keep that in mind.
And given that this is an international standard, therefore you can choose to work with any certification body that you would like to work with. Having said that, some certification bodies offer the service of a certification body even though they are not accredited. Be aware fo this!
This means that practically their certificate is worthless. Therefore, when you are working with a certification body, the first thing that you have to consider is that you are working with an accredited certification body.
And then there are different options when it comes to these accredited certification bodies. Some of them have very famous brands, okay, and others are less famous. As long as you work with an accredited certification body, they all carry the same weight when it comes to the actual certificate.
Working with a famous certification body invariably increases the price of your actual ISO certification and in my personal opinion it doesn’t add much value to the implementation of your management system. Having said that I strongly suggest that you get in touch with different certification bodies making sure that they are accredited before choosing the certification body that you would like to work with.
The second topic that I would like to talk about is the costs that are associated with carrying out a certification audit. So the price of the certification body depends on different aspects. As I have mentioned earlier one of the most important factors when choosing the price or when identifying the price for a certification body is the actual certification body.
Keep in mind that it is ultimately up to the certification body to decide on the value of their services and price them how they please. Having said that, there are two main criteria that all certification bodies consider when pricing their service for clients which are the size and the sector of your organization.
Naturally, the larger the organization, the greater the number of people working with the organization and the longer the audit will have to be. Therefore, the higher the price would be for larger organizations when compared to smaller organizations.
Another question that certification bodies ask when getting their information to be able to give you the quote would be the industry of your organization, the NACE code for example, whereby with this NACE code they will be able to determine the complexity of the operations of your organization and that also has an impact on the duration of your audit.
Therefore, the number of employees and the sector of your organization have an impact on the duration of the audit and both of these elements effectively affect the price that the certification body will charge you.
And once again, I wanted to explain that the price greatly depends on the certification body that you are going to choose to work with. I know that some of my clients would like to have a ballpark figure before starting an ISO implementation project. For a company employing around 15 to 20 people, the price for ISO certification as charged by an accredited certification body which is not super famous, yet still offers an accredited ISO certification to your organization, the price for such a certification body will be around €1500. Again, this is just a ballpark figure and depends on the certification body and other factors as mentioned earlier.
I work with certification bodies that charge much less. I work with certification bodies that, for example, can charge around €1000 for certification and I’ve also worked with certification bodies who charge €3000 for the same size of company and within the same industry.
So once again, testing the waters and seeing all the certification bodies that are available to work with is extremely important because different certification bodies have different prices for their services. And another question that I get asked quite often is how long does certification last?
This is an interesting question because the ISO certificate itself has an expiry date of three years. This makes people think and believe that once you get ISO certified and you have the certificate Then you won’t have to do anything until that certificate expires Naturally, this is a wrong assumption since to maintain your ISO certification, you will effectively need to do two main things
- You must carry out internal audits and management review meetings on a yearly basis.
- You will also need to host the certification body on a yearly basis for them to do an external audit.
