April 1, 2026
The National Association for Proficiency Testing (NAPT) is pleased to announce a major upgrade to its ‘NAPT 17025 – 2017 Lookup Tool’, hereby referred to as the tool. The tool’s original capability was limited to ISO/IEC 17025, 2017 clause guidance from the perspective of clause definitions via search words or direct selection. With release 8.0, the ‘Information’ portion of the tool has been vastly expanded now providing the following search categories harnessing the power of AI via author reviews, verifications and editing;
- CLAUSE REQUIREMENTS
- CLAUSE GUIDANCE
- AI SUGGESTED ASSESSOR REVIEWS
- AI SUGGESTED AUDIT NONCONFORMITIES
- AI SUGGESTED RELATED CLAUSES
This information provides enormous insight into clause / sub-clause interrelationships, mandates and potential pitfalls to avoid. This information has been compiled into a 582-page document entitled ‘17025 Assessment Handbook’ available free from the NAPT website. Additionally, users may enter their own guidance, searchable by topic or direct selection, providing an easy means to document / archive any aspect of laboratory accreditation sourcing from experience, articles, and presentations with ability to include graphics.
As one could infer from the above discussion, there are other new updates for the tool. The tool’s new ‘Assessing’ functionality provides the means to conduct laboratory accredited assessments / pre-assessments in an ergonomic, logical fashion while documenting clause / sub-clause evaluations (CSCE) … this is where things get really efficient!
At the heart of the ‘Assessing’ portion of the tool is the ‘General Checklist’ used for documenting CSCEs with the means to track completed evaluations allowing for non-sequential checklist CSCEs without having to do mental gymnastics trying to remember which evaluations have been completed. Evaluations are simple mouse clicks to document compliance with ‘canned’ responses which can be edited and appended. Guidance for each evaluation is available by clicking a clause / sub-clause number. A clause / sub-clause selection may be easily accessed via drop down index listing (no need to scroll through the over 200 individual clauses / sub-clauses). For additional functionality, such as creating a final report and computing CSCE percent completions (a real help in gauging actual on-site assessment time vs scheduled time), please refer to the tool’s user manual downloadable from the NAPT website.
Continuing on with the ‘Assessing’ portion of the tool, any CSCEs determined to be non-complaint can be copied to the ‘Audit Finding’ sheet (all additional sheets can be edited and saved to a file for archiving, sharing and printing). Clicking the ‘General Checklist – Update Sheets’ command button will copy information to other sheets such as audit information, any non-compliance CSCEs (‘Audit Finding’ sheet) as well as the 40 CSCEs that requires a document # or record # to the ‘Clause Evidence Tracking’ sheet for easily verifying required # have been entered.
Witness (Top-Down) Calibrations / Testing evaluations for an assessment can be performed via the tool’s ‘Top-Down Audit’ sheet. The seven required assessment clause topics along with other applicable AI generated topics (author reviewed, validated and edited) can be evaluated and results documented using this sheet. Clause / sub-clause guidance for witness topics are displayed via clicking an associated clause number. Clauses that are satisfied by witness assessment may be copied to the ‘General Checklist’ sheet. Upon completing a witness assessment, results can be copied to the ‘Top-Down Matrix’ sheet for easy reporting and archival (see user’s manual for additional information).
We will next explore the ‘Pre-Assessment’ portion of the tool which really launches us into turbo-drive. The ‘Audit Question’ sheet provide the means for creating audit questions associated with CSCEs that can be answered during an assessment. Results which satisfy CSCEs compliance can be easily copied to the ‘General Checklist’ sheet. Using the ‘Audit Question’ sheet, one can literally conduct an entire assessment around a handful of questions.
The ‘Top-Down Data’ sheet allows one to enter laboratory witness parameters (as typically found in a lab’s Scope of Accreditation), along with their associated measurement uncertainties file names prior to performing a witness assessment (this information appears as drop-down listings in the ‘Top-Down Audit’ sheet) saving much lookup time during the assessment.
The real power of the pre-assessment portion of the tool is the ‘Documents Review’ sheet. Prior to an assessment, documents such as calibration certificates, proficiency reports, minutes from management reviews, etc., may be obtained from a laboratory. The ‘Documents Review’ sheet provides means to associate specific documents to applicable clauses / sub-clauses for compliance evaluations. Clauses / Sub-clause which are satisfied by document reviews can be copied to the ‘General Checklist’ sheet. The sheet’s clause grouping function will automatically associate clauses / sub-clauses to a document type for the following;
- Calibration Certificate Clauses
- Complaint Clauses
- Environmental Clauses
- External Supplier Clauses
- Management Review Clauses
- Measurement Uncertainty Clauses
- Method Validation Clauses
- Non-conforming Work Clauses
- Proficiency Test Clauses
- Sampling Clauses
- Traceability Clauses
- Structure Requirement Clauses
Clauses / sub-clauses not satisfied in a clause grouping can be cleared prior to copying them to the ‘General Checklist’ sheet. Additionally, evidence, observations, remarks, etc., may be appended to the end of any satisfied clause before copying them to the ‘General Checklist’ sheet.
Given sufficient documentation and satisfactory compliance evaluations for all of the aforementioned clause groupings, a whooping 42.8% of an assessment can be performed without ever setting foot in a laboratory.
NAPT’s ‘NAPT 17025 – 2017 Lookup Tool’ revision 8 is a freeware application that can be downloaded at: https://proficiencystg.wpenginepowered.com/resource/an-iso-iec-17025-2017-software-assessment-tool-on-steroids
About NAPT
The National Association for Proficiency Testing (NAPT) is a leading organization dedicated to setting the gold standard for metrology proficiency testing. With over twenty-five years of experience, NAPT offers unparalleled expertise and resources to professionals and organizations across various industries. NAPT is proud to be a not-for-profit entity committed to integrity and serving as the only true independent provider of proficiency testing services in the metrology community.
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