PEFC training further strengthens assessment process

15 May 2015 News

The PEFC Registered Assessor training was held for the first time as an intensive three day training session at the PEFC International office in Geneva, Switzerland.

The new format enabled the assessors and PEFC International to walk through the assessment process together, identifying areas to improve the quality and transparency of the reporting and in the assessment process itself.

Assessors play an important role in PEFC. With PEFC being the only global forest certification system that requires all standards to be independently developed with multi-stakeholder participation, any national forest certification systems that seeks PEFC endorsement is subject to the rigorous PEFC assessment process to ensure their system meets PEFC’s Sustainability Benchmarks. This process, which also includes a sixty day global public consultation as well as a review by the PEFC Panel of Experts, is led by independent, PEFC Registered Assessors.

The assessors took a detailed look at the PEFC Sustainability Benchmark requirements, identifying expectations and clarifications for specific requirements in order to reach a better common understanding and a more harmonized and consistent application of the PEFC requirements.

“This training made me better understand the importance of our assessments in context of PEFC’s independent national certification systems,” said Christine Naaijen from Form international, following her participation in the training. “The time we spent to go into details will certainly benefit our future assessments.”

Going forward, PEFC International is set to introduce a systematic review of the PEFC Registered Assessors, and the way that PEFC International, the assessors, and the national system under review can provide feedback to each other.