Eight Months Later, Bureau Veritas Still Silent on Oxebridge Complaint

Back in February of this year, we filed a complaint against certification body Bureau Veritas and its Australian office, for allowing the consulting firm GreenBizCheck (GBC) to claim they could provide ISO 14001 certification faster and cheaper as a result of its partnership with BV. That kind of collusion is explicitly prohibited under ISO 17021, the accreditation rules under which BV operates.

The marketing by GBC dated back to 2011, and various BV representatives claimed to have been aware of the issue, but couldn’t get GBC to stop their marketing despite years of attempts. Oxebridge, on the other hand, was successful in getting nearly all of the claims removed only days after writing an article about it. But the failure by Bureau Veritas led us to file an official complaint with BV’s Australian office.

Now it’s some eight months later, and BV still hasn’t replied. Back in May, BV’s Iftikhar Baig said the complaint was nearly resolved, but then BV fell silent for another few months. To date, no notice of any action has been provided. (I have requested another update earlier today.)

The rules prohibit CBs like Bureau Veritas from claiming certification would be cheaper, faster or less difficult if a certain consulting service were used; the rules also require the CB to take suitable action, including legal action, to correct statements when they are made by third party consultants. Bureau Veritas has so far failed to do this, while enjoying an odd partnership with GBC by providing “desk audits” of clients for GBC’s own unaccredited environmental certification scheme. This arrangement has raised questions as to whether the partnership is the reason BV failed to take action against GBC.

Silent, as well, have been the accreditation bodies involved, namely ANAB and JAS-ANZ. We are supposed to believe that somehow they didn’t notice any of this for four and a half years, and likewise have had nothing to say about it since the Oxebridge complaint was publicly announced back in February.

Worse, a quick check this morning reveals the problematic language is still being used by EcoBizCheck, GBC’s US based office. A graphic on the site uses the BV logo next to the phrase “Low Cost ISO 14001”:

This is yet another example of the way CBs ignore official complaints and continue to violate ISO 17021, all under the watch of their accreditation bodies, who don’t dare take action lest they cut off revenue from their CB customers.  It’s likely the ABs won’t take action even if the complaint is escalated, which is the likely next step.

The BV issue is just added to a 10-year old pile of data and incidents that prove, over and over, the AB/CB relationship is deeply conflicted. The data is being gathered for testimony before national regulators and legislators, to build a case that the ISO certification process is so flawed, it may have breached the line into outright fraud. Oxebridge is working to have the FTC launch an investigation in the United States, to root out anti-competitive and deceptive trade practices by the CBs and ANAB; similar activities are being explored in other nations, although the efforts are more complicated.