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Position of Eurovent Certification clarified
Position of Eurovent Certification clarified
Interview with Erick Melquiond
Managing Director of Eurovent Certification
Erick Melquiond
Managing Director of Eurovent Certification Company
Jaap Hogeling: Does Eurovent Certification choose for accredited certification schemes? These scheme’s for product testing referring to the relevant product standards and could be based on EN45011 and accepted by Accreditation Authority.
Erick Melquiond: Eurovent Certification Company (ECC ) is an accredited certifier. ECC is holding the accreditation certificate number 5-0527 for Industrial Product according to ISO guide 65 and EN 45011:1998 delivered by COFRAC, scope and validity of the certificate at www.cofrac.fr. This accreditation is part of EA and IAF signed by a large number of countries [1].
Therefore all the product performance certificates ECC deliver have got a legal ground to be recognized by any authorities belonging to a country that have signed the mutual recognition agreement (see www.european-accreditation.org or www.iaf.nu)
Jaap Hogeling: Does Eurovent Certification require ISO17025 or EN45001 accredited testing laboratories, or is the selection just based on the declaration of the testing institute that they work according this standard and why?
Erick Melquiond: All except one laboratory ECC is using out of 14 are holding a valid certificate according to ISO 17025 for the family of product being tested. The only lab not complying is TNO. They have post-
QUESTIONS BY
Jaap Hogeling
Manager international projects and standards Chair CEN TC 371 Program Committee on EPBD ASHRAE Fellow, REHVA Fellow ISSO, Dutch Building Services Knowledge Centre The Netherlands
poned for the last four years to become ISO 17025 for Refrigerated Display Cabinets. Despite this point, as TNO is from our experience the best lab available in Europe for this kind of product , ECC is conducting an audit of the lab to verify and document key points specified in ISO 17025 (last audit December 2012).
Our specification for testing include an Operating Manual and a Rating Standard organized by product that rely on existing ISO or EN standard when available, however, numerous additional requirements are added to generate a reliable performance testing protocol as part of ECC certification. Selection of product to be tested are done according to ECC internal analysis protocol, based on the performance mapping and data mining comparison per product group across all the participating manufacturer´s data.
As part of the certificate process we are also conducting for some certification programs selection software check and manufacturing plant audit.
Jaap Hogeling: Most of the Eurovent certification schemes are based on EN or ISO product standards, did you check if the required and reported product data are really useful for the user of this product as basis for the design of the systems?
Erick Melquiond: Indeed we try to rely on EN or ISO, but not only. Sometimes no standard are available, one
[1] ACCREDIA ITALY, AKKREDITIERUNG AUSTRIA, BELAC BELGIUM, CAI CZECH REPUBLIC, DAkkS GERMANY, DANAK DENMARK, ENAC SPAIN, FINAS FINLAND, INAB IRELAND, IPAC PORTUGAL, NA NORWAY, PCA POLAND, RvA THE NETHERLANDS, SAS SWITZERLAND, SWEDAC SWEDEN , TURKAK TURKEY, UKAS UK
example would be fan coils, the certification scheme is 100% relying on Eurovent standards as current CEN or ISO standard are not fully covering this type of products. We are involved in the revision of EN1397 (European standard for fan coil testing) and we plan to use this standard when the next version is available (hopefully end of 2014).
Sometimes we are completing standard or regulation with an energy labeling scheme requiring more accurate performance measurements , for example for air conditioning with a 8% tolerance when the European standard asks for 15% tolerance in self-declaration (useless for the user). We have also labeling and ranking for several product groups including: Air handling units with a formula taking into account climatic conditions in Europe, Air filters, Fan coil unit, Chillers, Rooftops, Refrigerated display cabinets, Heat exchanger for refrigeration.
Jaap Hogeling: In discussions in product related technical committees (at CEN or ISO level) there is a first priority for just specifying the data to compare products in doing so the market seems well regulated. System designers need more data that are not always visible in the product declaration, they have to rely for these data on the producer self-declaration and documentation. Eurovent Certification will become more welcomed by the system designer if a more complete product declaration is supported. To refer to the product standard is not a good excuse, we all know that non producers are a in the minority in working groups developing these standards and don’t have the means to support these activities.
Erick Melquiond: This is a complex and important issue but already included in the ECC strategy at ECC organized in different levels including the following actions:
- to make certified data available on a wider product datapool at the level of the building segment (done end of 2012)
- to add data field required by thermal building calculation software in order to comply to building codes , country by country (done for France in 2012)
- to build up and extend the scope of the product database to include additional data field required and this country by country as building code are different (on-going project 2013-2015).
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