Information for CB and IB in the field of pressure equipment

On January 19, 2018, the Accreditation Body of Serbia organised a meeting with accredited/designated inspection and certification bodies in the field of pressure equipment and mobile pressure equipment in the Palace of Serbia. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the Ministry of Mining and Energy and the Ministry of Economy. Representatives of PE "Elektroprivreda Srbija" were also invited to the meeting but they did not attend it.

The meeting was initiated due to problems observed during regular surveillance activities of conformity assessment bodies in the field of pressure equipment, as well as frequent complaints about the work of accredited bodies in this field.

The Accreditation Body hereby informs all interested parties about the stance, which was also presented during the meeting, that the participation of certification bodies and type A inspection bodies at tenders requesting services involving the activities that the CABs can not perform (eg design, production, delivery , installation, maintenance, etc. of products or group of products subject to conformity assessment) in joint bids represents a direct threat to independence, or failure to fulfill the independence requirements defined in the reference documents. Certification bodies and type A inspection bodies often resort to participating in such public procurements and in various consortia, or by submitting a joint bid with other organizations in order to meet the requirements of the tender, out of which one party in order to perform the activity of e.g. designing, and the other to perform the conformity assessments of pressure equipment. However, taking into account Article 81, paragraph 7 of the Law on Public Procurement (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia No. 124/2012, 14/2015 and 68/2015), according to which "the bidders submitting the joint bid correspond to the contracting authority indefinitely jointly" The Accreditation Body of Serbia considers that this mode is not suitable because it leads to a potential risk of compromising the satisfaction of the requirements of the reference standard. The above paragraph applies to all certification bodies and type A inspection bodies.

The Accreditation Body of Serbia hereby appeals to all participants in the process, primarily to public enterprises that use the services of accredited conformity assessment bodies in the field of pressure equipment and other business entities that have the need to call for tenders in the field of performing services related to pressure equipment, to be extremely cautious in order to avoid "compelling" accredited conformity assessment bodies in that field, by formulating the requirements of public procurement, as well as by formulating the technical specification, to violate the rules based on which they have been granted accreditation.