EL/01-01/01/589
April 2001
EUROLAB GUIDANCE ON CODE OF CONDUCT
Preamble
Eurolab is the European Federation of National Associations of Measurement, Testing and Analytical Laboratories, representing over 2000 private and public laboratories. National Eurolabs are organisations committed to promoting high standards of conduct within the laboratories and organisations under their umbrella, hereafter called Members. The aim of this guidance document is to be an "aide mémoire" for members setting up their own codes of conduct. The recommended code should be seen as complementary to , and not replacing, existing rules and laws.
This advisory Code of Conduct was accepted by the EUROLAB General Assembly meeting on 30th March 2001 in Prague. The main principles are summarised below.
Members
· agree to respect the prevailing laws and regulations, codes of ethics, and other such generally established rules, principles and standards of behaviour as may be relevant to a particular assignment
· are aware of the importance of providing reliable results especially where significant economic interests are involved and where there are safety, health, social or environmental implications
· will abide by principles of free and fair market competition and observe the highest standards of propriety and conduct
· will apply fair employment rules to their employees, avoiding any kind of discrimination.
Professional behaviour
Members shall continuously strive to improve the quality of their activities and services. They shall abide by good technical and scientific practice. Fabrication or falsification of results as well as plagiarism are unacceptable. Citations should include open acknowledgement of the source.
Prompt action should be taken to investigate complains or cases of misconduct and, when necessary, appropriate remedial actions or disciplinary measures should be taken.
Information given by Members shall be factual and relevant and not wilfully misleading or capable of misinterpretation. Advertising and promotional activities will be governed by the same requirements. When misuse of results and information by Members' customers is observed or strongly assumed, the Member must take action to resolve the problem.
Members should also have a policy on how to handle safety, health and environmental issues, and especially define how to deal with issues in serious breach of legislation or social values.
Technical responsibility
With respect to assignments with clients, Members
· shall exercise their best efforts to define with the client the scope of the assignment in order to identify the client's actual needs and fields of application. They shall take particular care to clarify the client's needs not having experience in measurements, testing or analytical work and ensure that a mutual understanding exists. All client details shall be treated as strictly confidential unless they are already in the public domain or the client gives specific permission for their release.
· shall establish a contract, which may be based on general or standard terms, with the client for all assignments. The contract shall in addition to the technical specification, also cover, when reasonable, financial arrangements, time schedules, liabilities, confidentiality, intellectual property rights, ways to resolve disputes, etc. The contract should not be transferred to a third party unless the other party has agreed to the transfer. Any modification or addition to the contract shall be agreed between the contracting parties.
· shall accept only such assignments for which they are adequately qualified to undertake and shall ensure that adequate resources are available to complete the work.
Assignments shall be carried out with appropriate professional expertise and technical care. The objective is that the assignment is performed correctly at the first attempt in a cost-effective manner. Thus Members should
a) use competent personnel who also have the required formal competence in activities covered by mandatory competence requirements;
b) exploit multidisciplinary expertise when the assignment so requires;
c) give correct, reliable, concise and unambiguous results obtained in measurements, testing or analytical work of appropriate depth and scope.
d) advise and seek the approval of the client in writing when they intend to subcontract major parts of the assignment to a third party. Members are responsible for ensuring that the subcontractor is competent.
Liability
Members should have a procedure on how to maintain a predetermined confidentiality level for all the work carried out for their clients. If the degree of confidentiality is more stringent than usual, the measures required shall be defined in the contract or in a separate agreement or in a special commitment to secrecy.
Members accept liability for their performance of contracted work and for exercising reasonable skill, care and diligence in its execution. They explicitly address the scope and limits of their liability in the contracts that they propose to customers. Members should, unless they are the manufacturer, avoid liability for indirect damage or consequential losses as well as product liability. Members cannot accept liability for the use which their customers make of the results of the contracted work.
When appropriate, Members ensure that their contracts with customers address the ownership of intellectual property right generated in the performance of the contracted work and the responsibilities of the parties concerning its protection. When background information (pre-existing intellectual property) belonging to a Member is used in work for customers, the Member is entitled to charge for its use. Such charges shall be agreed with the customer for example as part of the contract.
Members shall have adequate liability insurance unless their liability is assumed by the State in accordance with national laws or by the organisation of which they form a part.
Fair competition
No discredit or blame should be put on competitors nor improper use made of information regarding them. Rather than emphasising the "weak" points or stressing the unfair or poor performance of competitors, the recommended approach is to educate the market to discriminate, by itself, between trustworthy and unreliable laboratories.
Each Member should define the client's rights to use the name of the laboratory and the results of the assignments for advertising purposes.
Members should support the creation of a level playing field in Europe and world-wide. Members promote the development of the technical competence and expertise in the field of measurement, testing and analytical activities.
Members have a systematic human resource management and apply fair employment rules avoiding any kind of discrimination. Performance expectations placed on the staff must be realistic. Members should encourage their staff to operate to high standards of uprightness and integrity.
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