Going above and beyond to meet your inspection needs

As an organisation that has assessed the quality of companies’ health and safety capabilities and services for over 20 years, SafeContractor has now gained an certified status with UKAS as a Type C Inspection Body against International Standard ISO/IEC 17020:2012.

ISO/IEC 17020:2012 is the internationally recognised standard specifying the requirements for the competence of bodies performing inspection activities and the UKAS accreditation has further demonstrated the level of impartiality and consistency within the SafeContractor assessment process.

For those wanting to know a bit more about UKAS – they’re the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) who are the National Accreditation Body in the UK. They’re appointed by the government to assess and certify organisations like SafeContractor that provide services including certification, testing, inspection and calibration.

Types of inspection bodies

There are 3 types of inspection body classification within ISO/IEC 17020:2012:

The different types of inspection bodies are classified as:

• Type A – inspection bodies that are third party services and only provide impartial and independent inspection
• Type B – businesses are separate and identifiable entities, and only provide services in-house, to a parent company
• Type C – are identifiable entities that may not be a separate part of the organisation, providing impartial inspection services to the parent as well as to other parties. They also provide additional complementary services such as support, training or consultancy.

As a Type C Inspection Body, we’ve added more value to our clients by strengthening our already robust procedures with a greater emphasis on impartiality and effectively managing conflicts of interest. It also encourages the companies we assess to put a magnifying glass on their employees’ competence, processes, and equipment to make sure that they’re meeting the expectations of their own customers and regulatory bodies.

As one of the first to achieve this in the supply chain compliance sector, SafeContractor are the largest Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) to hold this certification, helping to set the benchmark for the industry.