Leopoldo Cortez (picture) from IPAC, the Portuguese national accreditation body (NAB), chaired his last meeting of the EA Certification Committee (CC) on 6-7 October 2015 in Lisbon.
Further to his decision to step down from the EA CC Chairmanship, Leopoldo Cortez, the IPAC President, chaired for the last time the EA CC meeting which, for the occasion, was hosted by IPAC in Lisbon, Portugal, on 6 and 7 October.
Leopoldo closed his last meeting with deep-felt words to say how “delightful” it had been for him to chair the committee for the last 6 years, during which a lot of progress had been achieved. He thanked CC members for their active support and contribution, which had been leading to many improvements, not only in accreditation issues but also in the committee’s management.
The Committee has succeeded in supporting the strong development of accreditation in fields like product certification (ISO/IEC 17065) and verification (ISO 14065) for instance, and in facilitating EA’s increasing relations with the European Commission and stakeholders, in general. The correct development of regulatory (and private) certification schemes has also been a major concern in the activities of the Committee and its three permanent Working Groups (Food, Environment and EU ETS), as well as the liaisons and relationship with IAF. At the Lisbon meeting, Trevor Nash, the President of the European Federation of Associations of Certification (EFAC), who has been attending CC meetings for many years, stressed how much Leopoldo had always been careful to encourage stakeholders’ active contribution.
In October 2013, the EA CC Terms of Reference were also revised to boost the efficiency of the Committee through the setting up of a Management Group consisting of the Chair, the Vice-Chair as well as the conveners of the working groups (WGs) and the Review Panel (RP), aiming to ensure the overall management and coordination of CC operations by ensuring dynamical communication and feedback between the CC and the WGs and the RP. The Review Panel itself was initiated by Leopoldo as a specific, “institutionalised” structure composed of a few geographically-balanced EA NABs and one stakeholders’ representative, for giving preliminary answers to the questions raised by CC members in advance of meetings before they are discussed by the whole committee; the aim is for members to get ready to react and contribute to the elaboration of the EA CC FAQs. The RP model has been then emulated among other EA committees such as the Inspection and Laboratory Committees.
Leopoldo Cortez is very confident in the future management of the committee by Kevin Belson, the current EA CC Vice-Chair (see our last year news) from the UK NAB (UKAS), who has been elected the new EA CC Chair at the EA General Assembly in May 2015. Kevin will be assisted in his challenging task by Varpu Rantanen from the Finnish NAB (FINAS) who has been appointed the new Vice-Chair of the Committee on 6 October 2015. In according to EA’s tradition, the new tandem will take office as from the end of the EA General Assembly on 25-26 November 2015.
Kevin paid a genuine tribute to Leopoldo, thanking him for the huge work accomplished and for having confirmed the EA CC as a “very effective committee”.
After the whole committee movingly burst into sustained congratulating applause, Leopoldo cheerfully invited CC members to a farewell dinner party kindly offered by IPAC along the waterfront. The EA CC has turned one red-letter page.