An interesting question is often asked; Who is ISO 9001 Certified? The answer is not so simple.
When an organisation is ISO 9001 Certified they are assessed to the international standard and given a certificate by a Certification Body, such as Auva, who are Accredited by an IAF Signatory, such as UKAS.
The certification is valid for three years but only if the organisation maintains the certification over that period of time. In order to verify the certification is maintained over the period of time Certification Bodies perform annual assessments. If the management system is not maintained then the certificate will be suspended or withdrawn.
The problem you may have when just looking at the certificate itself is that you don’t know if the organisation is maintaining their certification and the certificate is valid.
In order to get around this you need a method for validating the certificate.
How to Validate an ISO 9001 Certificate
Each Certification Body is required to give you information about a certificate’s validity, some Certification Bodies make this easy such as Auva as we publish information on our website in the Certificate checker section. We do not know of other Certification Bodies who do this but you are allowed to contact them directly and ask.
To help with this process the IAF have come up with a certification checker on their website, this is not a mandatory requirement at the moment so certificates may not be on there. Although the list is getting longer so hopefully a majority of them will be in the near future. Auva are in the process of uploading their certificate information but our own website is up to date.
Our advice is to check the Certification Bodies website first, if they don’t have an easy system to check then try the IAF CertSearch system, if you still can’t find the certificate then contact the Certification Body directly.
Please be aware that the IAF CertSearch system is only for certificates from Certification Bodies who are accredited by IAF Signatories.
