We must review the calibration certificate upon receipt. But what needs to be reviewed, do you know how to review a calibration certificate? We can use the above list as a checklist when reviewing a calibration certificate or verifying the completeness of a calibration certificate.

If you received a calibration certificate from a calibration laboratory, it should contain the above list or ensure that it follows the above requirements. More specifically when the calibration laboratory that we have outsourced is not accredited to ISO 17025.

If you are under quality or handling calibration, one of your main concerns is to check all the above requirements of a calibration certificate to verify if complete or properly labeled and spelled.

One mistake for example, on a serial number, will invalidate the traceability of the instrument, traceability in the sense that the identification of the specific instrument is lost.

In addition to most details, I want to emphasize the list of requirements above which is the “Statement of compliance with requirements and specifications”.

This should be reviewed or checked immediately in the certificate to ensure that newly calibrated instruments have passed the calibration and are safe or acceptable to use. Below is a sample statement.

There are some cases where you will encounter an “Out of Tolerance” result upon receipt from the external calibration lab.

Determining this in the first place will prompt you to apply the corrective actions. (please see below info on how to check the results or data under as found/as left)

If ever you encounter an OOT (Out-of Tolerance) result, one corrective action is to adjust or reduce the calibration interval. How to perform this? Check out my other post here>> calibration interval adjustment