HPVA Laboratories® Expands Scope of Accreditations to Legal Timber Due Diligence

HPVA Laboratories® recently announced that the International Accreditation Service (IAS) has accredited the laboratories’ Legal Timber Due Diligence program, which provides independent certification of an operator’s compliance with legal requirements to harvest, use, and consume legally harvested timber sources and the wood products derived from them.

“This distinguished accreditation is the culmination of our vision for first-rate certification, inspection, and testing services, fully accredited to ISO/IEC standards, which began over twenty years ago with our building products certification programs,” said Brian Sause, Director of HPVA Laboratories®. “These accreditations demonstrate our commitment to provide services that meet the highest standards for certification agencies.”

The HPVA Laboratories® Legal Timber Due Diligence program includes detailed requirements for initial qualification of legal timber procurement policies and procedures, risk assessments methods, documented control systems, and on-site inspections. All requirements are designed to reasonably assure the legality of wood products in the supply chain through verified implementation of the American National Standard for Due Diligence in Procuring/Sourcing Legal Timber, ANS LTDD 1.0 2015.

The risk assessment processes of ANS LTDD 1.0 2015 were developed though the ANSI consensus process with a broad representation of stakeholders. The standard helps companies establish quality assurance programs that significantly reduce the risk of illegal timber and wood products entering their supply chain and to demonstrate a high level of due diligence in controlling the associated risk.

“With the recent expansion of our programs, we found it critically important to verify the accuracy, thoroughness, and qualifications of our team’s efforts to provide this service,” said Sause. “Third party accreditation to internationally recognized standards is what differentiates our Legal Timber Due Diligence program. It ensures our clients have confidence in their team’s efforts to combat illegal timber and verifies the implementation of robust quality management systems to demonstrate compliance with the U.S. Lacey Act.”

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