Run a technical testing or analysis laboratory

Laboratories that test, calibrate, inspect or analyse are a different business from the design practices in the rest of division 71. Running a testing house does not require a licence as a matter of general law, but your results are usually only accepted if they come from an accredited body — and a few areas of testing are tied directly to a statutory regime.

Get UKAS accreditation where your results need it

The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) is the sole national accreditation body recognised by government. Testing and calibration laboratories are accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 and inspection bodies to ISO/IEC 17020. Accreditation is voluntary in itself, but it becomes effectively mandatory wherever a customer's contract, a purchaser's specification or a regulatory scheme requires results from an accredited body — for example construction-products conformity assessment, environmental monitoring, or asbestos clearance. Accreditation applies UK-wide and is subject to ongoing surveillance.

Accredited asbestos surveying and clearance analysis

Where your laboratory carries out asbestos sampling, air monitoring or four-stage clearance — the reoccupation certificate issued after licensed removal — the analyst must be competent under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 and follow the HSE's HSG248 methodology. In practice, clearance certification requires UKAS accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025 / ISO/IEC 17020, and the analyst should be independent of the removal contractor. This is the main example of laboratory accreditation anchored to a statutory regime rather than being purely commercial. The Regulations apply in Great Britain; Northern Ireland applies the Control of Asbestos Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2012.

Asbestos analysis sits within a wider set of asbestos duties. The duty to manage asbestos in non-domestic premises falls on the building's dutyholder — see Manage asbestos in non-domestic buildings — and the licensed removal of higher-risk asbestos is a separate, licensed contractor activity, not lab analysis. Keep the analyst's role independent of both.

Next steps

Make sure the cross-cutting duties for your business are in place — see Run a compliant architecture or engineering practice — then confirm everything with the architecture, engineering and testing compliance checklist.