NATIONAL FOREWORD

This Indian Standard (Second Revision) which is identical with ISO/IEC 17025 : 2017 ‘General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories’ issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Eletrotechnical Commission (IEC) was adopted by the Bureau of Indian Standards on recommendation of the CASCO National Mirror Committee and approval of the Management and Systems Division Council.

This Standard was originally published in 2000 and subsequently revised in 2005. First revision of this standard was based on ISO/IEC 17025 : 2005 ‘General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories’. The Second revision of this standard has been undertaken to align with the latest version of ISO/IEC 17025 : 2017.

The major changes in this revision are as follows:

a) The risk-based thinking applied in this edition has enabled some reduction in prescriptive requirements and their replacement by performance-based requirements;

b) There is greater flexibility than in the previous edition in the requirements for processes, procedures, documented information and organizational responsibilities; and

c) A definition of “laboratory” has been added (see 3.6).

The text of the ISO/IEC Standard has been approved as suitable for publication as an Indian Standard without deviations. Certain terminologies and conventions are, however, not identical to those used in Indian Standards. Attention is particularly drawn to the following:

a) Wherever the words ‘International Standard’ appear referring to this standard, they should be read as ‘Indian Standard’.

b) Comma (,) has been used as a decimal marker, while in Indian Standards, the current practice is to use a point (.) as the decimal marker.