The accreditation process begins with the completion of an application and registration form. This can be requested from CCKL or downloaded from this website. Normally, the most senior professional at a laboratory submits the application at least a year in advance. The registration is valid for a maximum of two years.

The form must provide comprehensive information about the laboratory, organisation, employees, apparatus and field of work. The form also asks about the quality manual. Furthermore, the professional scope and technical capabilities of the laboratory must be specified based on a list of activities and processes. This specification provides CCKL sufficient advance insight into the organisation and sites of the laboratory.

If the laboratory is characterised by a wide diversity of processes, then it is impractical to make a list of everything the laboratory does. In that case it is more convenient to define the scope of the laboratory’s work in terms of the types of processes that are carried out. Or to divide the processes into groups. Given that CCKL grants accreditation for a specific field of work, in such situations experts in the field will determine whether that field forms a representative parts of the laboratory’s work. Accreditation is then granted for that specific field.

Taken as a whole, all this information gives a good indication of the situation in the laboratory in question. Depending upon the findings, CCKL will subsequently initiate a system assessment.