All You Want to Know About Conformity Assessment Schemes (Relax, It’s Legit!)
What This Webinar Covers:
Conformity assessment schemes sit at the heart of certification, accreditation, and regulatory acceptance, yet many professionals work within them daily without fully understanding how they are designed, governed, and recognized internationally. This webinar clears up the confusion around the term “scheme” itself and provides a structured look at what a conformity assessment scheme actually is, from product certification programs like CE marking to personnel certification schemes such as the IPC management system auditor scheme.
The session walks through how schemes are developed, validated, and maintained over their lifecycle, how they are evaluated for recognition under IAF MD 25, and the respective roles of scheme owners, conformity assessment bodies, and accreditation bodies in keeping schemes credible and consistent.
What You’ll Learn:
- What a conformity assessment scheme is and how it differs from a technical standard
- Scheme requirements across accreditation standards including ISO/IEC 17024, 17065, 17021-1, 17020, and 17025
- The core elements every robust scheme must include
- How schemes are developed, validated, and eventually revised or withdrawn
- How schemes are evaluated for endorsement under IAF MD 25
- The distinct roles of Scheme Owners, Conformity Assessment Bodies, and Accreditation Bodies
Key Takeaways:
- “Scheme” is a neutral technical term, a formalized framework of rules and procedures, not an indication of anything questionable.
- Schemes can be owned and used exclusively by one conformity assessment body or developed by a third party and shared across many CABs.
- A scheme is only eligible for accreditation body endorsement after it passes a formal evaluation for transparency, validated methodology, and consistent, reproducible results.
- Poorly designed schemes create inconsistent results, loss of credibility, regulatory rejection, and market distrust.
- Schemes must balance flexibility with consistency; overly rigid requirements reduce efficiency without improving reliability.
Presented By:
Dr. George Anastasopoulos
Technical and International Business Development Manager of PJLA