Standards, Regulations and Certification: Three Different Documents

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When compliance material is discussed, standards, regulations and certification are often lumped together. The three have different issuers, different ways of binding, and different uses, so separating them is the first step to finding the document that actually applies.

Regulations come from the regulator

Laws, regulations and departmental rules are issued by bodies with the relevant authority and set out obligations and responsibilities. When reading them, note the issuing body, the effective date and the scope of application, and check whether local provisions also apply. These documents normally have an official publication channel, and the original version should be used.

Standards define technical requirements and test methods

Standards may be national, sectoral, regional, organisational or international. They typically specify technical requirements, test methods and acceptance rules. Some are mandatory and others voluntary, so the status and the edition year need to be confirmed before use. Standards are also revised and superseded, which means an older edition may still be cited in an existing contract.

Certification and test reports are evidence of conformity

Certification is a conformity assessment carried out by a third party against defined rules, while a test report records results for a sample or a project. Both have a stated scope and a period of validity, and neither can be extended in meaning to cover every model in a range.

A sensible order of checking

First decide which kind of requirement applies to what you are doing, then look for the corresponding document. Where a clause is unclear, rely on the official text from the issuing body and on conclusions from an accredited body.

This article explains the difference between document types. It offers no compliance determination.