How certification works

Certification is done to instill confidence and trust with any stakeholder that the object or organisation has certain characteristics or embodies a specified minimum quality. To ensure this, it is important that the assessment is done by an independent, impartial and objective third party, called a certification body.

How certifications works

    Reasons to get certified

    You may want to become certified, just because you want to demonstrate to the world that your products, processes, services or organisation is of a certain level. Or you may require certification to be able to get into a certain market or because your customers ask you to.

    Kindly note that this document provides guidance only. It might not fully reflect specific processes for your organisation. For legal and financial processes, please consult the Terms of Contract available on our website.

    Certification process

    Once the Terms of Contract are agreed, the process is as follow

    Confirmation of Registration

    Subsequently we will send you a Confirmation of Registration, which details how your organization, units, processes, products and applicable standards are registered in our system. When you sign the offer and send it back to us, both parties enter into a legal contract for auditing and certification

    Prepare your audit

    All relevant documents and or links needed for you to prepare for your audit can be found on your portal:
    • Normative documents from Control Union Certifications
    • Relevant standards; some scheme owners require you to obtain the standard directly from them, normally at a fee

    Payment

    To ensure our impartial position, we are required by the rules of accreditation to receive payment before the (first) audit. For purposes of invoicing, we require the following information from you: Invoice address & Finance contact (if different from the address in your application)

    Portal

    You can update your payment information in our system portal Note: Control Union will only make (travel) arrangements and carry out the initial audit after payment of the first invoice has been received

    Receive the correct application form

    Application form

    The information in the application form is the basis for us to provide you with an offer that relates to the correct scope of activities, products, processes and or units to be certified. From a legal perspective it is important that this offer reflects the rights and obligations that both parties have and therefore must give a realistic indication of the amount of time needed to perform an assessment that enables the certification body to reach a well-founded certification decision.

    Contact us at our local office!

    You can always get in touch with your local office for support.
    Certifications – CANADA
    certifications.canada@controlunion.com
    Certifications – USA
    usacertifications@controlunion.com