UKAS (ISOIEC 17025) Calibrations

UKAS ISO/IEC 17025 - On Site Calibrations

UKAS ISO / IEC 17025 Calibrations from Brash are supplied on a contractual basis by our highly skilled team of weighing equipment technicians, combined with an annual maintenance contract we ensure you maintain your compliance and keep the equipment operating at its peak.

What is UKAS Calibration?

Calibration, involves the comparison of a measuring instrument, the Unit Instrument Test (IUT) to a Standard of known accuracy. The standard would ideally be more accurate than the IUT and have its own calibration certificate which can be traced back through an unbroken chain of calibrated standards to an appropriate standard held by a National Laboratory. In the UK, this would be the National Physical Laboratory (NPL).

UKAS Calibration is essentially calibration undertaken by a laboratory which has been independently audited and subsequently accredited by UKAS to carry out the work. 

What is UKAS? 

UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) is the sole body recognised by HM Government for assessing and accrediting the competence of calibration and testing laboratories.

UKAS Accreditation, ISO/IEC17025 and ISO9001

Laboratories are accredited by UKAS to ISO/IEC 17025: 2005 which is the internationally recognised standard for the competence of calibration and testing laboratories.

Our own systems, people, their training, and our technical capabilities are regularly and thoroughly examined and tested by a team of UKAS auditors, each of them specialists in their field. It is an expensive and time consuming process, but our on-going accreditation and fulfilment of the requirements of ISO / IEC 17025 means you can rest assured that we have the competence, impartiality and performance capability necessary to consistently deliver technically valid calibration results each and every time.

Accreditation to ISO / IEC 17025 also means our quality management systems meet the principles of ISO9001.

Separate certification of an accredited laboratory to ISO9001 is therefore unnecessary for calibration activities.

Certification of a laboratory to ISO 9001 alone, relates only to the laboratory's quality management systems, not the technical competence of the laboratory. A laboratory that is certified to ISO 9001 only, and is not accredited to ISO / IEC 17025 should not be considered an acceptable alternative to a UKAS laboratory.

It is important to note however that UKAS accreditation of a calibration laboratory does not necessarily mean that the laboratory can issue UKAS certificates for everything that it calibrates. Each individual calibration technique has to be separately accredited. The laboratory's 'UKAS Schedule of Accreditation' will detail the activities for which they have been accredited.

If you are unsure whether we or any other laboratory is UKAS accredited to carry out a particular calibration for you, you can check the Schedule of Accreditation. Or better still, just ask, because sometimes the publishing of the latest Schedule can lag a little behind the latest accreditations attributable to a laboratory.

UKAS Calibration Certificates

The certificate should detail the measured results of the calibration, both before and after any adjustments if this is appropriate. It should also detail the uncertainty of measurement that is associated with the reported results.