Personnel competence records under ISO/IEC 17025

Clause 6.2 requires all personnel who could influence laboratory activities to act impartially, be competent and work according to the management system. Competence requirements must be documented; personnel must be authorised for activities such as developing and validating methods, analysing results, reporting and authorising results.

A workable record set

• Job or role description with competence criteria.
• Training plan and evidence of completion, including supervised work.
• Authorisation record naming the activities, methods and equipment the person may operate independently.
• Periodic monitoring: witnessed calibrations, replicate measurements, proficiency results.

In ValiTrac's model, review and approval actions are tied to named, authorised users so that this evidence is produced as a by-product of the workflow.

Four steps, and the record each one leaves

Competence under clause 6.2 is a cycle rather than a certificate. Each step produces a record, and assessors follow the chain for one named person through one named activity — so a break anywhere in it is visible immediately.

Authorisation is narrower than people assume

Clause 6.2.6 lists the activities requiring authorisation, and they are specific: developing, modifying, verifying and validating methods; analysing results including statements of conformity or opinions; reporting, reviewing and authorising results. Being authorised to perform a calibration is not the same as being authorised to sign the certificate, and it is not the same as being authorised to issue the conformity statement on it.

In practice that means an authorisation matrix, not a list of trained people: rows for individuals, columns for activities and methods, and a date in each cell that is filled. The common finding is an authorisation that says calibration technician with no scope attached, under which nobody can tell whether the person who signed a thermocouple certificate was authorised for thermocouples.

Monitoring, which is the step that lapses

• Witnessed calibration: a second authorised person observes the full procedure against the method and records what they saw, not merely that they attended.
• Replicate measurement: the same artefact measured independently by two people, with the difference compared against the claimed uncertainty. This is the single most informative check, and the one that catches a drifting technique.
• Proficiency testing and interlaboratory comparison results, traced back to the individuals who performed the work.
• Review of issued reports for the errors competence is supposed to prevent: missing decision rules, wrong coverage factors, uncertainties quoted to four figures.
• A defined frequency, with the rationale. Annual for everyone is a schedule, not a risk-based plan.

Monitoring has to be recorded even when it finds nothing. A file containing only the year a problem was found reads as though monitoring began that year.