{"id":5061,"date":"2015-03-16T19:05:51","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T00:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/?p=5061"},"modified":"2015-03-17T21:03:30","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T02:03:30","slug":"misleading-bsi-contract-didnt-indicate-iso-9001-preassessment-is-optional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/misleading-bsi-contract-didnt-indicate-iso-9001-preassessment-is-optional\/","title":{"rendered":"Misleading? BSI Contract Didn’t Indicate ISO 9001 Preassessment Is Optional"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oxebridge has obtained a contract provided\u00a0by BSI for ISO 9001 certification services that placed\u00a0its preassessment services in\u00a0the section normally reserved for mandatory aspects, and not in\u00a0the section designated for optional services.<\/p>\n

According to ISO 17021, to which BSI is accredited by ANAB, preassessments are optional, and not a required step for certification. Registrars routinely try to sell clients on preassessments as it provides additional revenue beyond the bare minimum, but they typically are careful to note that the service is optional. The BSI proposal failed to make this distinction, and in fact appears to have done the opposite.<\/p>\n

BSI normally submits proposals that contain two pricing sections: one labeled “Service Details” and another “Optional Services.” Normally, the “Service Details” section only contains the mandatory certification steps required by ISO 17021, specifically a Stage 1 and Stage 2 audit. In the proposal reviewed by Oxebridge — which, once signed, becomes the binding contract — the BSI sales representatieve included the optional Preassessment in the “Service Details” section instead of the “Optional Services” section.<\/p>\n

\"bsicontract01\"

Section of BSI contract which placed the optional preassessment next to the mandatory Stage 1 and Stage 2 audits. Client name has been redacted.<\/p><\/div>\n

The only service listed in the Optional Services section was for BSI Entropy\u2122 Action Manager.<\/p>\n

\"BSI's

BSI’s “Optional Services” section did not include the preassessment audit.<\/p><\/div>\n

Oxebridge\u00a0has argued<\/a>\u00a0that BSI’s Entropy\u2122 software, and the accompanying procedures provided to Entropy\u2122 customers, amount to consulting. The language included in the certification proposal would support that argument, as it openly claims the BSI software can be used to “sustain effective compliance with a consistent and proven format for CAPA\u00a0across people, department, and location.” Both BSI and the European accreditation body UKAS have denied a problem; the issue has been escalated to the IAF<\/a> for a ruling.<\/p>\n

\"bsicontract03\"<\/p>\n

The BSI contract repeated the misleading placement of preassessment services\u00a0in a second breakdown of pricing, where it included the fee for the preassessment in the “Certification Services” section of the contract, and listed only Entropy\u2122 in the “Additional Costs – Optional Services” section.<\/p>\n

In a final section, under “Cost Proposal,” a table was included with a header row that did indicate the preassessment was “optional,” but the data in the table was blank.<\/p>\n

\"bsicontract04\"<\/p>\n

The client who received the proposal and contract confirmed that they interpreted the language to mean the preassessment was mandatory; they were unfamiliar with the arcane rules of ISO 17021. Typically, end user organizations are not familiar with the accreditation rules, and\u00a0rely on the registrar to adhere to them.<\/p>\n

Oxebridge has confirmed that a\u00a0previous BSI contract clearly marked the preassessment service as optional throughout the entire contract.<\/p>\n

The revelation is another black eye for both BSI and the ISO 9001 certification scheme in general, which is suffering from a series of major scandals alleging consulting by auditors, abdication of duty on the part of accreditation bodies, certifications issued to dubious companies, and even cover-ups of criminal activity. \u00a0To date the accreditation bodies, such as UKAS and its US counterpart ANAB, have denied any problems exist.<\/p>\n

BSI did not respond to requests for clarification on this issue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oxebridge has obtained a contract provided by BSI for ISO 9001 certification services that placed its preassessment services in the section normally reserved for mandatory aspects, and out of the section designated for optional services. Under ISO 17021, preassessments are optional, and not a mandatory audit step towards certification.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[61,50,164,23,349,52,14,350,165],"class_list":["post-5061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-accreditation-bodies","tag-anab","tag-bsi","tag-certification-bodies","tag-contracts","tag-iso-17021","tag-iso-9001","tag-proposals","tag-ukas","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5061"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5071,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5061\/revisions\/5071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}