Tue, 25 August, 2020
In the space of a few weeks COVID-19 turned the entire world upside down. As governments rushed to stem the rising tide of infections, businesses were closed, people were told to work from home wherever possible, others to isolate completely - unified effort to mitigate the loss of life by COVID-19. This meant that our approved examination providers were unable to open to allow our certificate holders to sit their exam and recertify their certificate.
As many of our certificate holders work in areas considered ‘essential services’, the need to have a valid certificate to demonstrate their competence is paramount, so, CSWIP had to act. Based on guidance given by the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), in alignment with the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) Technical Policy, and with the approval of our Management Committees, CSWIP introduced a new policy to help meet the needs of our certificate holders while still abiding by our accreditation obligations.
This policy so far, as enabled over 300 certificate holders to extend the validity of their certificate to enable them to continue working as well as sit their exams once the lockdowns had been lifted and exams restarted. Now that the examination centres are reopening, all certificate holders who received an extension are given priority to sit their recertification exam or retest, they only need to mention this when booking their exam. We strongly encourage all certificate holders to contact their local examination centre as soon as possible to book and sit their exam.
With the threat of second wave looming, there is the chance that many of our certificate holders whose extension are due to expire soon, may still not be able to sit their exam. As local lockdowns continue to occur, and another full country lockdown a distinct possibility, we are aware that further measures may need to be introduced. As such, we are already investigating new ways of meeting the certification requirements of our certificate holders while still maintaining our accreditation and reputation as a certification body that can be relied upon to assure the industry of the role specific competence of its personnel.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our certificate holders for their patience and understanding during this tumultuous time. We also want to highlight the hard work and effort of our staff who, despite the difficult circumstances, continued to provide a high level of service to our 40,000+ certificate holders around the world. We are dedicated to ensuring the quality of the certificate you hold, and work hard to make sure that we do whatever we can to help our certificate holders during these unprecedented circumstances.