CQP Advanced Level
Quality Infrastructure and Legal Framework cheat sheet
Every chapter's key points, formulas and definitions on one page, for the last week before the exam. Each heading links to the chapter that explains it.
Introduction to quality infrastructure
- A national quality infrastructure is the whole institutional framework, public and private, that provides standardisation, metrology, accreditation and conformity assessment, so that products and services can be shown to meet defined requirements.
- It exists to solve an information problem: a buyer cannot check safety, composition or provenance by looking, so where claims cannot be verified buyers discount them, genuine quality earns no premium and the market degrades.
- Each pillar answers its own question: standardisation says what the requirement should be, metrology makes the measurement comparable, conformity assessment produces the evidence, and accreditation shows that the body producing it is competent.
- The pillars are a chain, not a list: with no standard there is nothing to test against, with no metrology the number is not comparable, with no conformity assessment there is no evidence, and with no accreditation the evidence is not believed.
- The standards body writes the requirement, the conformity assessment body checks against it and the accreditation body checks the checker; where one institution does two of these, as KEBS does, the impartiality risk is managed by separating the functions internally.
Key terms
- The national standards body
- In Kenya, the Kenya Bureau of Standards, established under the Standards Act (Cap 496). It develops and publishes Kenya Standards, represents Kenya in international and regional standardisation, operates certification and testing services, and administers the standardisation mark and import conformity arrangements.
- The national accreditation body
- In Kenya, the Kenya Accreditation Service. It accredits testing and calibration laboratories, medical laboratories, inspection bodies, certification bodies and proficiency testing providers, against the relevant international standards, and holds international recognition through the ILAC and IAF arrangements.
- The national metrology institute and legal metrology service
- Maintains the national measurement standards and their traceability to the international system of units, provides calibration services, and administers legal metrology, meaning the control of measuring instruments used in trade, health, safety and enforcement.
- Conformity assessment bodies
- Testing and calibration laboratories, inspection bodies and certification bodies, both public and private. In a mature infrastructure most of these are private and the state's role is to accredit rather than to perform.
- Sector regulators
- Bodies with technical regulatory authority in their sectors: among others the plant health inspectorate, the veterinary services, the pharmacy and poisons regulator, the environmental authority, the energy and petroleum regulator, the communications authority, and the public health authorities.
- Ministries and policy bodies
- Responsible for national quality policy, for the legal framework, and for the country's positions in trade negotiations and in regional harmonisation.
- Regional and international bodies
- The East African Community's standardisation, quality assurance, metrology and testing framework; the African Organisation for Standardisation; ISO, IEC and Codex internationally; and the WTO, which sets the disciplines within which national technical regulation must operate.
- Industry, professional and consumer bodies
- Manufacturers' associations, professional institutes and consumer organisations, which participate in standards development and, in the consumer case, provide the demand-side pressure that makes enforcement politically sustainable.
The rest of the sheet covers
- Introduction to standardization
- An overview of standards development
- Conformity assessment
- Metrology
- Accreditation
- The World Trade Organization
- Technical regulations
- Exam technique and revision
- Glossary