Governance Policy
Policy on Safeguarding Impartiality
In conformity assessment, impartiality and confidentiality are fundamental to building and maintaining the trust of clients, interested parties and the wider community. GIC Vietnam is committed to fully implementing requirements for safeguarding impartiality across all levels and functions of its operations in accordance with the following principles:
01
Commitment from Top Management
The Director of GIC Vietnam is committed to impartiality as a fundamental principle and ensures that commercial, financial or other interests do not influence certification and verification/validation decisions. GIC Vietnam ensures that its services are provided fairly and without discrimination to all clients.
02
Management of Risks to Impartiality
- Annually, or whenever significant changes occur, GIC Vietnam identifies, analyzes and evaluates risks to impartiality arising from ownership, governance, personnel, financial and other relationships using the RPN (Risk Priority Number) approach.
- If a risk cannot be reduced to an acceptable level, GIC Vietnam will decline to provide the service.
03
Separation of Activities and Personnel Controls
- GIC Vietnam does not provide management system consultancy, GHG emissions report preparation or ESG report preparation services to entities that it certifies, verifies or validates.
- Personnel who have previously provided consultancy services to a client shall not participate in assessment, verification or validation activities for that client for at least 24 months after the consultancy engagement has ended.
- For verification/validation activities, experts maintain professional skepticism and do not automatically accept client evidence without appropriate independent verification.
04
Independent Oversight Mechanism (Certification and Verification/Validation Council)
- The Council comprises balanced representation from interested parties, including regulatory authorities, associations, experts and clients, ensuring that no single interest predominates.
- The Council oversees GIC Vietnam's activities to identify potential tendencies toward bias and has the authority to inform accreditation bodies (BoA, UKAS, etc.) if recommendations concerning impartiality are not adequately addressed.
05
Independence in Review and Decision-Making
- All certification and verification/validation files are subject to internal review by a person with competence equivalent to that of a Team Leader who has not participated in the respective engagement.
- The person making the certification decision or issuing the verification/validation statement is fully independent from the team of experts who performed the assessment.
