ISO/IEC 17024:2012, Conformity assessment — General requirements for bodies operating certification of persons (ISO 17024) is the International Standard relating to the conformity assessment for bodies operating certification of persons. Certification bodies that are accredited to this standard have demonstrated an impartial and rigorous quality approach and their clients can have confidence in the personnel certified through such schemes.

IRATA are receiving increasing enquiries from industry, members and applying members asking the question: “who regulates IRATA?”, and this is particularly so for regions that have already embraced this standard. More regions are starting to insist on ISO backed competency certification for personnel. IRATA has continued to work towards gaining ISO17024 accreditation and third-party recognition as a certification body throughout the COVID pandemic.

During 2020 IRATA underwent a desktop review by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) and presented some of the large-scale digital projects that are underway (e.g. digital logbooks, the Assessor App, electronic theory tests and bespoke database systems to streamline data processing). It is anticipated that the required work will take 10-12 months to complete and IRATA have agreed an audit date with UKAS in keeping with this timeframe. IRATA have expanded their IT development and compliance teams to support the ongoing work and are partnering with external providers where this provides the best solution. IRATA’s pursuit of ISO17024 accreditation is in harmony with their willingness to best service all stakeholders of the IRATA safe system of work and is expected to provide assurance to industry that their certification standards remain high even with the significant growth in recent times.