CAB-related information about the Regulation on Portable Pressure Equipment

The Accreditation Body of Serbia hereby informs all accredited conformity assessment bodies and those seeking accreditation that, pursuant to published Regulation on Portable Pressure Equipment (published in the Official Gazette of the RS No. 30/2014 of 14.03.2014), the Regulation on Technical Norms for Portable Closed Vessels for Compressed, Liquid and Dilute Gases (“Official Journal of the SFRY“, Nos. 25/80 and 9/86, “Official Journal of the SRY“, Nos. 21/94, 56/95 and 1/03, and “Official Gazette of the RS“, No. 8/12) and Ordinance on Mandatory Atestation of Steel Propane-Butane Bottles with Valves (“Official Journal of the SFRY“, No. 44/87) shall be repealed with effect from the date of entry of this Regulation (1st June 2014). The Regulation prescribes (Article 16) that certificates of conformity issued on the basis of repealed regulations shall remain valid until the next periodic inspection, intermediate inspections or exceptional checks, but no later than 1^st June 2019.

Having in mind the aforementioned, and after consulting with the Directorate for Dangerous Goods Transport, the Accreditation Body shall, from 1^st June 2014, mark in the scopes of accreditation the said regulations as “repealed” in case of those CABs wishing to get accredited as per the new Regulation. Scopes of accreditation containing repealed regulations will remain valid until the finalisation of the accreditation procedure as per the new Regulation, but no later than 31.05.2015 when ATS will make decisions on reduction of the scope of accreditation or withdrawal of accreditation for those CABs that will still have in their scopes of accreditation reference to repealed regulations. In case of CABs that will still have reference to repealed regulations in their scopes of accreditation, but that do not wish to get accredited as per the new Regulation, ATS will, from 1^st June 2014, make decisions on reduction of the scope of accreditation or withdrawal of accreditation.

Having in mind that the Regulation (Article 10) prescribes that accreditation as per SRPS ISO/IEC 17020 is one of the conditions to designate bodies, competence of all CABs wishing to get accredited for conformity assessment procedures as per the Regulation on Portable Pressure Equipment will be determined during initial assessments, reassessments and assessments for the purpose of extension of the scope of accreditation. When formulating scopes of accreditation CABs shall (under “reference documents” column) list, for each conformity assessment (CA) procedure (type of inspection), regulations, ADR/RID/ADN points describing CA procedures and specific standard(s) referring to ADR/RID/AND.

CABs wishing to get accredited as per SRPS ISO/IEC 17020 should meet the criteria for type A inspection bodies in order to become designated in keeping with the Regulation. The Directorate for Dangerous Goods Transport posted on its website (www.utot.gov.rs) an announcement for companies wishing to become designated for conformity assessment in case of portable pressure equipment and for interested parties wishing to apply in order to become designated.

Moreover, laboratories can be granted accreditation, as per the requirements of SRPS ISO/IEC 17025, to perform testing of portable pressure equipment, but it has to be mentioned that these laboratories cannot be designated by the Directorate for Dangerous Goods Transport given that such accreditation can confuse the market.