Scope of accreditation: read the technical annex before you sign

A supplier sends you its accreditation certificate, you file it, case closed. That is exactly where the most common unpleasant surprise happens: the certificate is genuine and valid, but the service you are buying falls outside its perimeter. An accreditation is never general — it is granted for a precise scope, described in a technical annex that almost nobody reads. Here is how to read it, and the two checks that stop you paying for a report without the guarantee you thought you were buying.

What an accreditation certificate contains

A Cofrac certificate is a short document. It identifies the accredited body, its accreditation number, the standard it is accredited against — NF EN ISO/IEC 17025 for a testing or calibration laboratory, NF EN ISO/IEC 17020 for an inspection body, NF EN ISO/IEC 17065 for a certifier of products, services and processes, for instance — plus the effective date and the expiry of the accreditation.

The essential part, though, is elsewhere. It is in the technical annex attached to the certificate: that is what describes the scope, often over several pages. Depending on the field, it lists “object tested / method used” pairs, product families, certification schemes, types of inspection, and always the sites concerned.

An accreditation is therefore read on two levels: status (is the body accredited, against which standard, until when?) and perimeter (is my need inside it?). The first reassures; the second commits.

The four dimensions of a scope

Whatever the activity, a scope breaks down along four axes. Running through them takes five minutes and avoids most misunderstandings.

The activity. One body may certify management systems, certify persons and inspect installations. Each of those activities falls under a distinct accreditation standard and therefore a distinct accreditation. Check that the one you need is the one on the certificate you are shown.

The standard or method. A laboratory accredited for a standardised method is not automatically accredited for an alternative method on the same parameter. A certifier accredited for one scheme is not accredited for every scheme in its catalogue. In practice this is the most discriminating axis.

The object. Depending on the field: the matrix analysed, the product family, the category of installation, the population of certified persons. A test accredited on one type of material says nothing about competence recognised on another.

The site. Scopes are attached to named sites. A multi-site group has not necessarily had every branch accredited. If your work is done by a regional office, check that it appears in the annex.

Reading the wording on a report

Once the work is done, the document delivered also carries indications worth decoding.

A report covered by the accreditation bears the accreditation mark and the corresponding number. A report that does not bear it is not thereby worthless: it simply signals that the work was performed outside the accreditation. That is frequent and legitimate — a new method not yet added to the scope, an unusual parameter, a consulting service distinct from the control activity.

The point to watch is elsewhere: mixed documents, where some results are covered and others are not. Serious bodies flag this explicitly, result by result. If you cannot find that distinction and the report mixes heterogeneous services, ask in writing. The answer will tell you a great deal about the provider.

Beware too of a frequent misuse: the accreditation mark is not an advertising logo. It goes on covered documents, not on a general brochure or a homepage, precisely because it would then certify a competence wider than the real scope.

The checking method, in four steps

1. Ask for the certificate and its technical annex, not a number or a screenshot. An accredited body provides them without difficulty.
2. Check validity against the list of accredited bodies published by Cofrac. Check the expiry: a certificate several years old may have been reduced, suspended or withdrawn.
3. Match your need to the scope, along the four axes above. If the annex is technical and you are not a specialist, ask the body in writing to identify the line that covers your service.
4. Repeat the check at contract renewal. Scopes evolve: they widen, but they also shrink.

This discipline applies to every certificate you are shown, not only to accreditations: our guide to checking an ISO certificate applies the same logic to management-system certificates received from your suppliers.

Why the scope carries most of the value

Scope is not administrative paperwork: it is the only thing that makes one certificate comparable to another. Economic research on international trade shows this well. Knut Blind, Axel Mangelsdorf and Jakob Pohlisch, in a study published in 2018 in the International Journal of Production Economics, analysed over a long period the link between the diffusion of ISO 9000 certifications and trade flows: certification supports trade, and this effect is reinforced by the quality of the accreditation system underpinning it — the effect being particularly marked for trade between developing countries (see the study). What crosses borders is not the logo: it is the precise, bounded guarantee that an identified competence has been verified.

For buyers, the consequence is direct. A specification demanding “an accredited body”, with no standard and no scope, demands almost nothing. A specification demanding “a body accredited to standard X, for scheme Y, on site Z” demands exactly what you need — and lets you compare offers on the same basis.

The case of training providers

If you run a training organisation, this reading matters when choosing your certification body. Two checks apply: that it appears on the official list of bodies authorised to issue the French quality certification, and that its scope covers the categories of activity you deliver — training actions, skills assessments, validation of prior experiential learning, apprenticeship. A certifier whose scope does not cover apprenticeship cannot certify your apprentice training centre, however willing it may be.

Remember the vocabulary rule too: your certifier is accredited, you are certified. The distinction is set out in our article on the differences between accreditation, certification and qualification.

Take action

Take the accreditation certificates in your files — laboratory, inspection body, certifier — and check for each that the service you buy appears in the technical annex. Then add that check to your purchasing procedure, stating the expected standard and scope in your invitations to tender. For an overview of how the scheme works, see our page on Cofrac accreditation.