(ANAB: Milwaukee) -- Randy A. Dougherty, vice president of the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB), has been elected chair of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), the world association of national accreditation bodies for management systems, products, and personnel.

Dougherty oversees all activities related to the accreditation programs of ANAB, the recognized national accreditation body for management systems certification bodies in the United States.

The IAF works to enhance confidence and reduce risk in global trade by ensuring that certificates of conformance to international standards can be accepted as equal across national boundaries because national accreditation bodies engage in like practices. Accreditation by IAF member bodies assures users of the competence of the bodies that audit and issue certificates attesting to conformance with international standards.

“My highest priority as IAF chair is to ensure that IAF is structured and has the resources to be able to fulfill the expectations of stakeholders,” Dougherty says. “Worldwide, stakeholders look to IAF to ensure that accredited conformity assessment bodies are impartial and competent; this is necessary to inspire confidence that an accredited certification—whether of a product, a company’s management system, or a person—can be relied on as an attestation by a competent and independent third party that the accredited body conforms to specified requirements.

“The accreditation mark of an IAF member accreditation body provides confidence in the results of accredited activity, regardless of where in the world the activity occurs. This helps facilitate global trade and reduce costs because the conformity assessment activity does not need to be repeated by another body.”

Prior to being named chair of IAF, Dougherty served two terms as chair of the IAF technical committee and member of the IAF executive committee. As IAF chair, he succeeds Thomas Facklam, of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akkreditierung mbH, the German accreditation association.

Dougherty has 25 years of experience in third-party conformity assessment. Before joining ANAB in 2001, he was president and CEO of NSF-ISR Ltd., a management systems certification body. Prior to that, he was with NSF International, a standards development organization and third-party product certifier. 

At the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Dougherty is a member of the ISO Conformity Assessment Committee (CASCO) Chairman’s Policy and Coordination Group and co-convener of ISO/CASCO Work Group 21, which developed ISO/IEC 17021:2006, the international standard that specifies requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems.

Dougherty is co-convener of the ISO 9000 Advisory Group, which was chartered by ISO Technical Committee 176 (developers of the ISO 9000 quality management system standards), the IAF Technical Committee, and ISO/CASCO. He is also a member of the IAF-International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC)-ISO Joint Working Group