Benefits Of Accreditation

For Businesses

Accreditation offers assurance in the integrity of conformity assessment reports and certificates of your products or services, thereby instilling confidence in stakeholders and promoting differentiated products and services to your customers.

• Reduced risk and higher level of quality assurance:
  Take the guesswork out of choosing a CAB. SAC accredited CABs have been assessed according to internationally recognised conformity assessment frameworks, thereby ensuring that you get the quality service that best fulfils your requirements.

• Reduced costs:
  With accreditation, you save cost from the removal or reduction of:

  • Product failure

  • Downtime

  • Re-testing

  • Re-auditing

• Facilitates global trade:
  Overseas markets will be more ready to accept the reports of an accredited CAB, hence minimising technical barriers to trade.
  As SAC is a signatory to many regional and international arrangements, this means that products and services that are tested and/or certified by accredited CABs in Singapore will also be more readily accepted in these signatory countries. By engaging a SAC accredited CAB, you will open more doors to business opportunities worldwide.

For Regulators / Specifiers

• Increasing confidence:
  As a demonstration of competency, accreditation increases confidence in data that is crucial in decision-making, thus increasing public confidence and reinforcing its commitment to ensuring public safety, health and environment protection.

• Reducing overheads:
  Costs are lowered due to the elimination of re-testing, re-sampling and lost time (both locally and globally), improved efficiency of the assessment process, as well as removing the need for regulators to employ and manage its own audit personnel, thus avoiding duplicate audits.

• Allowing flexibility:
  Regulators are able to set the overall policy and regulation, while relying on the accredited conformity assessment bodies to evaluate compliance.

• Procurement decision:
  As the major procurers of goods and services, the government may rely on accredited services to inform their buying decisions, as it provides confidence that suppliers have the appropriate systems in place to deliver the requirements.

For Conformity Assessment Bodies

Increase confidence in the integrity of your certifications and reports with accreditation. You can be assured that the results of your conformity assessments meet prevailing industry standards and best practices. Besides enhanced transparency, fair competition and service quality, the accreditation process also reveals any gaps in non-conformity to help you improve your operational performance.

What is Accreditation?

Accreditation is the independent evaluation of conformity assessment bodies against recognised standards to ensure their impartiality and competency in carrying conformity assessment activities, such as testing, calibration, inspection and certification.

The accreditation programmes relevant to regulators would be those that are related to health, safety, and the environment. All countries have regulations related to safety of goods and services. There are also requirements regarding environmental impact, from recycling to energy consumption.

SAC is a Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) Signatory to various international organisations including ILAC, IAF, APAC. Countries which are signatories of the MRA recognise that their partners' conformity assessment bodies operate in an equivalent way and that they deliver equivalent accreditations, providing the same level of competence and confidence.

For more information about MRA, please click here.

Why Use Accredited CABs?

Using accredited CABs offers multiple benefits for companies. Besides providing a marketing opportunity, it also boosts the company’s image – having been tried and certified by reliable CABs, the company's products and services are endorsed with the highest assurance. This, in turn, instils confidence in the company’s customers and stakeholders alike.

Because government bodies and regulations constantly have to make informed decisions on vital issues such as public welfare, environmental protection, development of new regulations and requirements, as well as allotment of resources, they must have confidence in the data generated by the laboratories that carry out testing and measurement of calibration in these specific fields. This is where an accredited laboratory comes in to help establish this confidence.

An accreditation body conducts a thorough evaluation of a CAB in its practises, staff and management. CABs are evaluated against international standards such as the ISO/IEC 17020, 17021, 17025, Guide 65 and so on. Accredited CABs are regularly re-examined to ensure continual compliance with the accreditation requirements, so that they maintain a high standard of technical expertise and competency.

Additionally, accreditation helps to improve efficiency by eliminating the need for re-testing and re-sampling of goods and services. This is done through SAC's independent assessment of CABs, which provides objective assurance that that they have met applicable standards.

Types of Accreditation

SAC currently operates the following accreditation schemes* -

• Calibration and testing laboratories:
  Chemical, biological, environmental, medical, medical imaging, non-destructive testing, gaming and testing related to civil and mechanical engineering.

• Inspection bodies:
  Industrial pressure vessels and lifting equipment, structural steelwork, motor vehicles, cargo inspection and site investigation.

• Management system certification bodies:
  Quality management system, environmental management system, occupational safety & health management system, HACCP based food management system, food safety management system, good distribution practice for medical devices, business continuity management and energy management system.

• Product certification bodies

• Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) scheme:
  Ensures that certified facilities performing non-clinical safety testing in Singapore comply with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Principles of GLP.

Please click here for the detailed requirements of all the accreditation schemes.

• For other types of conformity assessment services currently not offered by SAC, we are open to exploring the option of providing accreditation or developing a new scheme/programme for the respective areas. Do kindly contact us here.

How Do You Identify a SAC Accredited Conformity Assessment Body?

You can identify a SAC accredited conformity assessment body (CAB) by SAC accreditation marks as proof of accreditation. Accredited reports or certificates carry the SAC mark, along with the unique SAC accreditation certificate number.

In addition, an accredited test or inspection report will include the following statement:

"The results reported herein have been performed in accordance with the terms of accreditation under the Singapore Accreditation Council."

Accreditation is granted for a specific scope of activities and not for all activities undertaken by the CABs. Thus, accredited CABs are only allowed to issue accredited reports for those tests, calibrations or inspections, or issue accredited certificates for the specific certification scopes which they have been accredited.

Search For CABs

The accreditation schemes that SAC operates are Management Systems Certification Bodies, Inspection Bodies, Product Certification Bodies, Verification & Validation Bodies, Calibration and Testing Laboratories, Proficiency Testing Providers as well as Good Laboratory Practice. Each scheme offers a specific set of capabilities, and they are altogether designed to accommodate the different products and services currently in the market.

Click here to search for CABs.