The Assessment Team
The Dublin Accreditation Council contracts peer experts to assess organisations on DAC’s behalf to ensure compliance with the relevant standards and requirements. These experts are also trained in the assessment of quality assurance principles and together with the accreditation officer form the team that assesses each organisation.
Accreditation Symbol
The Dublin Accreditation Council strongly encourages accredited organisations to use the accreditation symbol on their reports or certificates.The accreditation symbol, ownership of which is vested in DAC, is a combination of the Board’s logo in association with the registration number and the accreditation standard. Reference is also made to the organisation’s scope of accreditation.
The use of the symbol and logo is subject to strict criteria laid down in the DAC R1 Regulations.
Accreditation symbols will include:
- Accreditation Standard
- Scope of accreditation
- Registration Number
DAC Policy on Handling Complaints
DAC is committed to offering a professional standard of accreditation services and welcomes all feedback from stakeholders and other interested parties about the services it provides. This feedback can be forwarded to us via the contact page.
In the event that DAC receives a complaint relating to the activities of DAC or its accredited organisations, DAC will make every effort to resolve the complaint in accordance with the policy outlined below.
The regulations for handling complaints can be found in the DAC R1 Regulations.
DAC expects that complaints concerning the services provided by DAC accredited organisations should be dealt with by the accredited organisation in the first instance as accreditation requires these organisations to have formal complaint handling procedures for the investigation and resolution of complaints made to them by their clients.
Complaints made to DAC shall be addressed in writing to the Manager of DAC as DAC will not normally provide feedback on complaints which are based on hearsay.
DAC aims to process complaints in a timely manner and shall respect where possible any reasonable request for preservation of anonymity or confidentiality requested by those making claims or statements in connection with a complaint.
The Manager of DAC will formally reply to the complainant detailing the results of the investigation and any actions to be taken by DAC where applicable.
Further information on how DAC processes complaints may be obtained from The Dublin Accreditation Council.
Glossary of Terms
AccreditationProcedure by which an authoritative body gives formal recognition that a body or person is competent to carry out specific tasks.
Certification
Procedure by which a third party gives written assurance that a system, product, process or service conforms to specified requirements.
Inspection
Systematic examination of the extent to which a product, process or service fulfills specified requirements by observation and judgement accompanied as appropriate by measurement, testing or gauging.
Body
Legal or administrative entity that has specific tasks and composition.
Conformity Assessment
Any activity concerned with determining directly or indirectly that relevant requirements are fulfilled.
Notified body
A third party authorised to perform the conformity assessment tasks specified in the Directive, which has been appointed by a Member State from the bodies falling within it's jurisdiction, which has the necessary qualifications, meets the requirements laid down in the Directive and has been notified to the Commission and to other Member States.
Third party
A person or body that is recognized as being independent of the parties involved, as concerns the issue in question. Note: Parties involved are usually supplier ('first party') and purchaser ('second party') interests.
Calibration
Set of operations that establish, under specified conditions, the relationship between values of quantities indicated by a measuring instrument or measuring system, or values represented by a material measure or a reference material, and the corresponding values realized by standards.
Traceability
Property of the result of a measurement or the value of a standard whereby it can be related to stated references, usually national or international standards, through an unbroken chain of comparisons all having stated uncertainties.
Test
Technical operation that consists of the determination of one or more characteristics of a given product, process or service according to a specified procedure.