Impartiality en Accreditatie Bureau Veritas 

Introduction 

One of the core values of Bureau Veritas, and also a key element of our Code of Ethics, is impartiality. It is therefore essential for Bureau Veritas to manage any conflicts of interest in order to ensure the impartiality of the inspection and audit services provided by Bureau Veritas. This is to protect Bureau Veritas' objectivity and brand, to ensure customer satisfaction, and to comply with the rules of various monitoring authorities. Bureau Veritas has established a strict impartiality policy, and is closely monitoring it by both internal and external impartiality committees established worldwide.

Policies:
Bureau Veritas has established a number of policies that act as general principles in providing its services: 
- compliance with the requirements of accreditation standards and laws and regulations;
- where accreditation adds value to the service, accreditation will be pursued;
- the substantive assessment of the service provided and the decision by issuing a certificate shall be carried out by an independent specialist in the relevant field;
- where possible, an efficient combination of services is sought for the customer.

Impartiality
Bureau Veritas understands the importance of acting with independence in our management system certification activities, and of delivering professional conclusions without bias. On this page, you can find useful resources including our impartiality statement.

Statement of impartiality
"One of Bureau Veritas Certification's core values and also a key element to our Code of Ethics, is impartiality. It is therefore essential for Bureau Veritas Certification to manage any potential conflict of interest to safeguard the impartiality of Bureau Veritas Certification audit and certification services rendered.

This is in order to protect Bureau Veritas Certification objectivity and brand, ensure customer satisfaction and comply with the rules of accreditation and regulatory bodies.

Bureau Veritas Certification has defined and maintains a strict impartiality policy and monitors this closely through both internal and external impartiality committees established worldwide."

How we maintain impartiality
Bureau Veritas has processes in place to ensure that all our auditors throughout the world maintain impartiality and integrity. Upon entering employment or becoming a contractor, all auditors must sign a contract that specifies that they have no conflict of interest, and that they will maintain absolute confidentiality. At the same time, they sign Bureau Veritas’ Code of Ethics, which describes the values, principles and rules applicable to all employees and contractors. Regular training sessions for auditors also emphasize the importance of impartiality.

Through an Impartiality Risk Analysis, Bureau Veritas identifies, analyses and documents potential situations of conflict of interests, rising from provision of certification services, including:

  • relationships among, and common clients across, all parts of Bureau Veritas;
  • any significant changes in the certification activities, organization, structure and legal status;
  • mergers and acquisitions.

Bureau Veritas also manages impartiality through its Impartiality 
Committees established at local and Holding level. These Committees:

  • assist in developing the policies relating to impartiality of its certification activities;
  • counteract any tendency on the part of Bureau Veritas entity to allow commercial, or other considerations, to prevent consistent and objective provision of certification activities;
  • advise on matters affecting confidence in certification, including openness and public perception;
  • review, at least once a year, impartiality of the audit, certification and decision-making processes of the BVC entity;
  • review evaluation of finances and sources of income for threats to impartiality;
  • review any residual impartiality risk to determine if it is within the level of acceptable risk.

What constitutes a threat to impartiality
Bureau Veritas maintains vigilance in the face of four main threats to impartiality:

  1. Self-interest: the threat of a person acting in their own interest rather than that of the organization
  2. Self-review: whereby a person or body reviews work carried out by themselves. This includes auditing the management systems of a client to whom the certification body has provided management systems consultancy
  3. Trust: threats arising from an auditor or entity being too familiar with the client instead of demanding evidence during the audit
  4. Intimidation: whereby an auditor believes he or she is coerced openly or implicitly

Bureau Veritas takes its impartiality obligations extremely seriously.

If you are a client of Bureau Veritas certification or other interested party and feel that we have not maintained our impartiality, please contact us and we will respond promptly. You can register a complaint online .

Source: https://certification.bureauveritas.com/who-we-are/our-resources/impartiality

Clients and stakeholders (Context):

Bureau Veritas takes into account the interests of both its customers and those of the parties involved with the customer as part of the context analysis when performing its services for the benefit of its clients.

Independent Administrative Body (Notified Body):

Bureau Veritas is also a Notified Body for some European directives. This means that Bureau Veritas has been designated by the government to review legal rules based on European directives, such as the PED 2014/68/EU Directive or the EU 305/2011 Directive related to NEN 1090 CE marking of steel constructions.

For more information, please refer to the European Commission's Notified Body database, https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/nando/.

Dutch accreditation

The website of the Dutch accreditation body, the Dutch Accreditation Council (RvA - Raad voor Accreditatie) offers you insight into the current accreditations of our organisation, independently of the information on the Dutch  website of Bureau Veritas. Detailed information about the Bureau Veritas accredited scope of activities in The Netherlands can be traced back to the Dutch Accreditation Council website via www.rva.nl based on the following accreditation characteristics; I002, C558, C248, C165.

Belgian accreditation

The website of the Belgian accreditation body BELAC offers you insight into the current accreditations of our organization, independently of the information on the Belgian website of Bureau Veritas. Detailed information about the accredited scope of activities of Bureau Veritas in Belgium can be traced back to the BELAC website www.belac.be based on the following accreditation references: 022-QMS en 022-EMS.

For information about the Bureau Veritas global organization’s other accreditation, please refer to the website of the relevant accreditation institution.