Become a Responsible Wood notified certification body
If you are a certification body looking to offer Responsible Wood certification to forest owners and/or companies in the supply chain you need to take care of the following things: accreditation, notification and training.
Accreditation
We only work with certification bodies that follow ISO rules and our own requirements for certification bodies. This is demonstrated by a valid accreditation. The accreditation needs to be issued by JAS-ANZ who is an accreditation body that is a member of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) or IAF’s Regional Accreditation Groups.
Forest Management
To carry out Forest Management certification you will need an accreditation against ISO 17021. PEFC Technical Document Annex 6 contains the PEFC specific requirements which include that the organisation is an impartial and independent third party which has not been included in the standard setting process, the governing or decision making process, on the forest management, and are independent of certificated organisations.
Chain of Custody
To operate Responsible Wood chain of custody certification you will need an accreditation against ISO 17065 and AS 4707. This accreditation is issued by JAS-ANZ, a signatory of the IAF Multilateral Recognition Agreement (MLA) for product certification.
Notification
Next, you will need to get approval, or “notification”, from Responsible Wood in order to issue Responsible Wood recognized certificates. With the required accreditation in place, the Responsible Wood notification is granted by signing a notification contract with Responsible Wood.
Once the contract is signed, you will be included in our list of Responsible Wood Endorsed Certification Bodies (link to Certification Bodies in the Certification and accreditation section of the For Business section of the website). Then, you need to report every Responsible Wood certificate that you issue to us, along with information on the certified entity, as requested by Responsible Wood, and we register the certificate on our online database (insert link to Responsible Wood database). Part of the notification is the payment of a notification fee for every certificate that is issued.
