ISO 17020 accreditation for a small inspection company

ISO/IEC 17020 accreditation is granted by a national accreditation body, such as the RvA in the Netherlands, after it has checked your management system, your files and at least one real inspection. For a small company the cost is mostly assessor time plus an annual fee, and the lead time depends less on the body than on how soon you can show records of a system that already works. An independent cargo surveyor normally applies as Type A.

This article is the route for a small firm. For what separates ISO 17020 from ISO 17025, and what the two standards mean for a laboratory, read ISO 17025 vs ISO 17020.

Step 1: decide the scope and the type

An accreditation covers a defined scope, not the company as a whole. The RvA describes a scope in three columns: the field of inspection, the kind and extent of inspection, and the methods and procedures used (ASR102, section 2). For a cargo surveyor the field could be food raw materials or feed including transport and storage, which are fields the RvA lists, and the methods would be the contract rules, ISO sampling standards or your own methods. Keep the first scope narrow. You can extend it later, at the cost of another assessment. If your clients work on Gafta contracts, compare this route with Gafta's own audited standard in how to become a Gafta approved superintendent.

Then the type. ISO/IEC 17020 classifies an inspection body by its independence of the items it inspects. A Type A body and its staff may not be engaged in the design, manufacture, supply, installation, purchase, ownership, use or maintenance of the items inspected, and ILAC adds that consultancy on those activities counts as a conflict too (ILAC-P15, Annex A). This wording is from the 2012 edition and ILAC-P15, not from the 2026 text, which is paywalled and was not read for this article. Applied to cargo: a surveyor who also trades, stores or owns the commodities on its scope does not qualify as Type A, and one who only inspects does. ILAC treats this as yes or no. Partial compliance cannot be repaired with control measures; the conflicting activity has to go (ILAC-P15, 4.1.6 n2).

You will still meet Types B and C on older certificates and in ILAC-P15. Under the 2012 edition (clause 4.1.6), Type B was an in-house inspection body: a separate and identifiable part of an organisation that designs, makes, supplies, installs, uses or maintains the items, inspecting only for its parent. Type C was an identifiable, but not necessarily separate, part of such an organisation that inspects for its parent, for other parties, or both. ILAC notes that Type C has the same impartiality and competence requirements as Type A and only differs in independence. An independent surveyor is neither. The 2026 edition of the standard, published on 27 March 2026, replaces Types A, B and C with Type A and Type non-A (ISO). Since 1 September 2026 the RvA and UKAS accept new applications only against the 2026 edition (RvA ASR013; UKAS technical bulletin), so apply to that edition. The ASR102 version read for this article came into force in September 2025, before the 2026 edition, so check the current version before you plan.

Step 2: build a system and run it first

The RvA does not assess a plan. Its list of documents for an initial assessment (ASR102, annex A) includes:

• the application forms and a recent chamber of commerce extract;
• an organisation chart and a quality manual with procedures;
• a cross-reference table between the standard and your system;
• a report of an internal audit and a report of a management review, each no older than six months;
• the competence requirements and qualification procedure for inspectors;
• the impartiality risk analysis required by clause 4.1.3;
• a sample inspection report and inspection certificate.

That list decides when the months above begin in earnest. An internal audit and a management review cannot be shown before you have done them, so you need a period of working to your own procedures first. That list is the RvA's, in Dutch. Other national bodies set their own lists, so ask yours.

Step 3: pre-assessment, office assessment and witnessing

The RvA states that an accreditation trajectory takes 6 to 12 months; its process page applies this to new accreditation, to keeping an accreditation and to extending one, without separating them. Treat it as the published range and plan from the state of your records, not from the day you apply.

For an initial assessment the RvA plans a pre-assessment, an office assessment and a witnessed inspection (ASR102, section 3.2). At the office it reads at least two client files per activity group and samples 25% of the competence files, with a minimum of two. It observes at least one inspection per activity group, normally a whole activity. Files from real work are therefore mandatory. If you have not done any inspections yet, you have nothing to show. After the decision, an accreditation cycle runs for four years and contains the surveillance assessments and the reassessment.

What the assessors look for

The RvA's examples of serious findings show the pattern (ASR102, annex C): the body cannot demonstrate that the inspector is competent, observations cast doubt on independence, essential points are missed in an inspection, or so many records are missing from a file that a reliable inspection can no longer be shown. Behind that sit five routines.

• Impartiality. Identify risks on an ongoing basis, describe relationships of the company and its people, and record the responses. ILAC expects the impartiality review to be part of the annual management review (ILAC-P15, 4.1.3 and 8.5.2).
• Competence records. Define what an inspector must know, train, and keep evidence that the inspector keeps performing competently. ILAC lists satisfactory inspection results, monitoring, mentoring and witnessing, and the absence of legitimate appeals or complaints (6.1.9).
• Complaints. Assessors read complaints and appeals as evidence. A rise in complaints is one of the triggers ILAC names for more frequent internal audits (8.6.4).
• Internal audit. Cover all requirements of the standard within the accreditation cycle, for all fields and premises, and justify the frequency. A competent external person may carry out the audit (8.6.4 and 8.6.5).
• Management review. Review resources, workload, training needs and the effectiveness of the competence system (8.5.2).

What it costs

Fees are published per accreditation body, so use the figures of the body you apply to. For the RvA in 2026, all excluding VAT (Tarievenbesluit 2026):

• Assessment time. Billed at EUR 227 per hour for a lead assessor and EUR 210 for a technical assessor, on the time actually spent including preparation and reporting. For scale, one 8-hour day of a lead assessor is 8 × 227 = EUR 1,816. Pre-assessments and initial assessments are invoiced in advance, on an estimate, and performed after payment.
• Travel. EUR 88 per person per day within the Netherlands, and EUR 109 per hour of travel time when assessment time is under eight hours.
• Annual fee. EUR 2,750 for a body with no more than three people involved in accredited activities, EUR 4,955 otherwise. It is charged at the start of the year and is not refunded if the accreditation ends.
• Information meetings. EUR 210 per hour, minimum two hours, if an applicant needs more than a few answers by phone or e-mail.

Your own effort is the other large component: writing procedures, training, audits, and the hours of a management review. We found no published figure for it, and it depends on how much of your system exists already.

Practical rule

Run your survey company on FOSS

FOSS, the Field Operational Services System, keeps the records of one survey together from nomination to certificate: offline entry on board, built-in calculation methods as used in the sector, and an audit log of who entered which value. Run your survey company on FOSS, or get in touch. Accreditation remains the judgement of the accreditation body; software does not replace the management system.