Legal Information

Confidentiality Policy

As a certification body, Best Practice Certifications P/L and our auditors are given access to documents and information that are considered to be highly confidential. We also work closely with many clients that are in direct competition with each other. For these reasons it is important to our business that we maintain a strictly high level of confidentiality for all of our clients. This policy describes how confidentiality is maintained and must be adhered to by all Best Practice Certification personnel.

General

Whilst the majority of our client’s information remains confidential, there is some information that is made publicly available relating to the certification. This information includes the name and address of the organisation, the standard to which it is certified and the expiry date of the certification. Where additional client information is requested by third party organisations such as government procurement departments, the client will be advised and no information will be released without the written consent of the client (unless legally required).

Office Level

All client information that is collected including client documents, audit reports, complaints from external and regulatory bodies, audit notes etc are stored on a secure server that is password protected. Hard copies of documents, including those collected during audits, are destroyed after being noted in the audit report or scanned into the clients file. Where client information is required to be released by law (typically by subpoena) the client will be notified prior to the information being released by Best Practice Certifications P/L.

Auditors 

The nature of an audit also presents a large risk for maintaining confidentiality, as our auditors have client files on their laptops and there is also a potential for client information to be released during conversation. In order to control these risks, all auditors’ and technical experts are required to complete the Contractor Agreement that includes a declaration of confidentiality. All auditors laptops must be password protected and when left unattended must be locked. Auditors are also encouraged to minimise the use of hard copy notes except on sites that do not facilitate the use of a laptop as hard copy notes are less secure. Auditors are also discouraged from taking hard copy client documents off site.

Impartiality Committee

Impartiality committee members need to review information relating to the client in order to perform their function. As some of the committee members come from outside the certification body, members are also required to sign a confidentiality statement.

Refund Policy

Fees

Fees quoted and invoiced by Best Practice apply to proposals accepted by the client and cover valid certification periods as identified on an applicable BPC Client Certificate. Best Practice Certification Pty Ltd does not offer refunds once a certificate has been issued.

For new clients, BPC will not refund the whole or any part of the accepted proposal once the Services have commenced save for where there has been a material breach of the terms of this Agreement by BPC.

Services are deemed to have commenced when the client gains access to Best Practice Training Academy and is issued with a Membership Certificate.  

Delivery of Certification Services

In delivering Certification Services, Best Practice maintains a “Client of Client” focused service. Certificates, certification marks, written, audio, and the visual material is made available to BPC clients in electronic format. This is to enable ease of transmission of Service Material and Intellectual Property from BPC Clients to Interested Parties of BPC clients. There are many purposes of this transmittal, including satisfying interested party compliance criteria from time to time.

Certification

Certification is an ongoing process and a service designed to provide confidence to the Interested Parties of BPC clients or specifically Regulatory Bodies of our clients that a level of conformance to a standard is being maintained.

Commercial Agreement

While a commercial agreement may have ceased to exist between Best Practice and a Client under the standard terms and conditions offered by Best Practice, there is all reasonable potential that the interested parties continue to operate after that time on the prediction that certification is being maintained until the previously published expiry date of that certification.

Certification Agreement

Where a certification agreement has been canceled by either party, all efforts shall be made by the BPC client to withdraw from the circulation of all service material, BPC Intellectual Property, electronic information issued to interested parties in a timely manner. This may in some circumstances be impractical and or a slow process. It is there for an understanding by all parties that while a commercial agreement may be ceased, evidence of the commercial relationship will still be available in the commercial market for some time into the future. A continued risk exists that the commercial market of BPC clients may be mislead that a certification is current when a commercial agreement has been canceled.

Based on these situations BPC cannot offer refunds for fee’s paid inside a valid certification period whether a commercial agreement exists ornot. Refunds for fees paid shall only be made available for payments made after the applicable Certificate Expiry date has passed. 

Complaints and Appeals Policy 

We are a friendly team and look forward to chatting with you about any issues that are of concern to your business.

If you have an issue that you would like to raise with us, or are unsure about anything to do with our service, please phone us on 1300 402 602.

Complaints and appeals

The Best Practice complaints and appeals procedure has been put in place to ensure that our clients have a fair and unbiased avenue for raising complaints and appeals. If you feel that we have not done our best to satisfy your needs or you disagree with your assessment result, you may use the following avenues to voice your concerns.

Complaints relating to our service 

Our team of assessors and administration staff are trained in our procedures to provide you with excellent customer service and act in an ethical and professional manner.

If you are unhappy with our processes or policies we would like to hear about it so we can have the opportunity to improve our policies. In the same way as we expect our certified clients to implement improvement processes, we also implement our own improvement systems.

All complaints may be addressed to the Chief Executive Officer through email to complaints (at) bestpracticecertification.com.au* or by calling 1300 402 602. All complaints are treated as confidential, and all complaints will be taken seriously and investigated. When your complaint is received it will be formally acknowledged and reviewed by the Chief Executive Officer and you will be kept up to date with the progress and outcome.

*Please replace (at) with @ in order to lodge a complaint.

Appeals against assessment findings

If you disagree with assessment findings or decisions relating to your certification, you should at first discuss it with your lead assessor. If you are not satisfied with the outcome of this discussion then you should contact the Chief Executive Officer at complaints (at) bestpracticecertification.com.au** or call 1300 402 602. The Chief Executive Officer will review your appeal and in most cases organise a meeting to discuss the issue with you.

In managing and reviewing complaints and appeals, the Best Practice Certification assessor/staff member involved will be excluded from the process. Our procedures also ensure that there will be no discrimination and that complaints and appeals will remain confidential.

**Please replace (at) with @ in order to lodge a complaint.

Quality policy 

Best Practice Certification is committed to the implementation of quality management principals across all levels and policies provided by our organisation.

Quality management objectives have been developed by Best Practice Certification to ensure that we continue to implement, maintain and improve a management system that assists us to provide a high quality of certification policies that are free from bias and are non-discriminatory.

Policies and procedures have been documented to ensure that all Best Practice Certification critical processes are controlled and managed with a philosophy of ‘plan, do, check, act’ in accordance with applicable standards, legislation and accreditation requirements.

The overall objectives of Best Practice Certification include the following:

• Identify and service the needs of our clients
• Identify and comply with the needs of our accrediting body
• Monitor and measure customer feedback to ensure that we maintain positive customer perception
• Maintain transparency in all certification activities and decision making to ensure impartiality is maintained
• Provide a service to our clients that achieves positive outcomes and continual improvement.
• Up-hold the integrity and value of management system certification and assessment to international and Australian standards
• Best Practice Certification top management have developed this policy to influence and guide the culture of our organisation. Compliance to this policy is mandatory for all staff and contractors

Code of conduct

Best Practice Certification has developed core philosophies as part of our business plan. These philosophies are aimed at maintaining long term customer relations and delivering exceptional certification policies

In order to achieve these philosophies, this Code of Conduct has been developed. The assessment is the face of Best Practice Certification and for this reason all staff and contractors shall:

• Act professionally, accurate and in an unbiased manner at all times whilst performing Best Practice Certification activities
• Not represent conflicting or competing interests
• Not discuss or disclose any information relating to an assessment unless required by law or authorised in writing by the assessor and the assessment organisation
• Not accept any inducement, commission, gift or any other benefit from the assessor organisations, their employees or any interested party or knowingly allow colleagues to do so (Note: Best Practice does not consider acceptance of refreshments during the assessment process to be in breach of this requirement).
• Not intentionally communicate false or misleading information that may compromise the integrity of any assessor
• Act in a polite manner at all times

Above all, Best Practice Certification places high value in our customer relations. We respect that the client has invited us into their organisation to help them and add value to their business management system processes.

We aim to establish long-term relationships with our clients with care not to lose sight of the bigger picture and our clients as some of our competitors have in the past.

Any breach of this policy by staff shall result in disciplinary action.

Use of logos, marks and certificates

Clients that have been certified by Best Practice Certification may use the Best Practice Certification logo and accreditation symbol on advertising material, stationary, business cards etc, provided that the following conditions are adhered to:

• Certification and accreditation marks / logos may not be used on any product or product packaging unless the certification is to a product certification standard
• Certification and accreditation marks / logos may not be used on any laboratory test results, calibration documents or inspection reports
• Certification marks and accreditation logos must not be used in a way that could mislead the client to perceive the organisation to be certified outside the scope of the certification
• Upon suspension, withdrawal, cancellation etc of certification, all marketing material and public information referencing the certification and accreditation must be discontinued
• Certification marks and accreditation logos must not be used in a manner that could bring Best Practice Certification into disrepute and loss of public trust
• If the JAS-ANZ logo is used it must be situated alongside the Best Practice Certification logo. The JAS-ANZ logo must not be used without the Best Practice Certification logo

Failure to meet the conditions stated above will result in the following action:

• The client shall be requested to rectify inappropriate use of the certification and accreditation by removal of the logos or certificate e.g. removal from product
• Formal retraction of statements or advertising through the same media, as in inappropriate use e.g. if the certified client places an advertisement in a magazine misleading their customer to think they are certified for something other than the scope, they shall place an advertisement in the next publication of the magazine retracting the statement
• Request for corrective action, suspension, publication of the transgression and if necessary legal action
• In the event that the organisation fails to maintain certification, changes to another provider or cancels certification, the organisation must cease use of all marks, logos, certificates and public claims relating to the certification and accreditation by Best Practice Certification. This includes removal of existing material containing reference to certification and accreditation.

Should the organisation fail to take appropriate action Best Practice Certification may take action to deal with the incorrect reference to certification status or misleading use of certification documents, marks and logos. Such action may include requests for corrective action, suspension or withdrawal of certification, publication of the transgression and, if necessary, legal action.

If you aware of any organisation in breach of these conditions or you have questions relating to the use of our logos, please contact Best Practice Certification.

Statement of impartiality

Best Practice Certification is an independent Australian company that provides certification policies throughout Australia.

In order to maintain the high quality of our policies, Best Practice Certification ensures that impartiality is maintained without exception whilst carrying out management system certification policies.

We maintain impartiality through managing conflict of interest and ensuring the objectivity of our management system certification activities.

All assessors are assigned to a client by methods that ensure impartiality is maintained. This includes signed declarations by the assessor and detailed review of both the client and assessor.

All Best Practice Certification procedures for carrying out certification activities including assessments, client communication, correspondence and certification decision making have been documented to ensure that conflict of interest does not exist. 

Where a conflict of interest has been identified and the conflict cannot be removed through the assignment of a new assessor, the certification policies shall not be provided to the client.

Any concerns relating to the impartiality of our certification policies can be directed to the Best Practice Certification Chief Executive Officer.

Copyright

Copyright © Best Practice Certification. All rights reserved. You are permitted to browse this website and to reproduce extracts by way of printing, downloading to a hard disk and by distribution to other people but, in all cases, for non-commercial, informational and personal purposes only. No reproduction of any part of the site may be sold or distributed for commercial gain nor shall it be modified or incorporated in any other work, publication or website, whether in hard copy or electronic format, including posting to any other website. No other licence or right is granted except as expressly provided, Best Practice Certification reserves all intellectual property rights in respect of any content on this website. 

Trademarks

All trade marks displayed on this website are either owned or used under licence by Best Practice Certification and its affiliates.

Use of content on the website

Except where explicitly stated otherwise, this website is provided for informational purposes only about Best Practice Certification products and services. You should always obtain specific advice before deciding on the suitability of any product or service. 

Unless explicitly stated, no part of this website forms part of the terms and conditions under which a particular product or service is provided and is not an offer to enter into a legally binding contract.

Availability of products

Reference to any product or service on the site does not constitute an offer to sell or supply that product or service and does not mean that the product or service is available in all countries or that the name, description or specification of the product or service will be the same as that included on this website. 

No information on this website shall constitute an invitation to invest in Best Practice Certification or any affiliate.

Content

Whilst all reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that the information contained in this website is accurate and up to date, changes in circumstances after the date of publication may impact upon the accuracy of the information. Nothing contained in this website shall be construed as conferring any licence or right under any trade mark or in relation to any copyright of Best Practice Certification or any third party. Subject to any implied terms which cannot be excluded by law, Best Practice Certification and their directors, officers and employees, do not accept any liability for any loss or damage, however caused, to any person arising from the use of or reliance upon the information contained in this website. Best Practice Certification does not accept liability for information contained in websites linked to this web-site. 

We reserve the right to make any changes and corrections to this site as and when we consider it appropriate and without notice. At various points throughout the site you may be offered automatic links to other internet sites relevant to a particular aspect of this site. This does not indicate that Best Practice Certification or its affiliates are necessarily associated with any of these other sites or their owners. Whilst it is the intention of Best Practice Certification that you should find these other sites of interest, neither Best Practice Certification, nor affiliates, or their affiliates’ officers, employees and agents shall have any responsibility or liability of any nature whatsoever for these other sites or any information contained in them, none of which have been verified or endorsed by Best Practice Certification or affiliates. If at any time you find that you have accessed another site you may return to this site by clicking on the ‘backwards’ arrow, or by keying in the domain address of Best Practice Certification http://www.bestpracticecertification.com.au

External links to website

You must obtain prior written approval from Best Practice Certification before linking to this website except where:

• the link contains only the words “Best Practice Certification”;
• when activated, the link directs the user to http://www.bestpracticecertification.com.au;
• the link opens in a full-sized, fully operable browser window not forming part of the linking site screen;
• the link does not in any way create the impression of endorsement or association of the linking entity with Best Practice Certification, nor attempt to devalue the goodwill associated with Best Practice Certification or its trademarks

Best Practice Certification reserves the right to revoke this consent to link at any time in its sole discretion.

Information provided by you

You warrant that any information or know-how you submit via this website will not be proprietary, confidential, nor violate the intellectual property rights of any party. 

You further agree that Best Practice Certification may use or deal with any information or know-how received via this website without charge or restriction. 

You warrant that you shall not, provide any information or materials to Best Practice Certification that are defamatory, threatening, obscene, harassing, or otherwise unlawful.

Kobi Simmat, Chief Executive Officer, Best Practice Certification 

Office A3, 1-3 Rodborough Road,  Frenchs Forest NSW 2086

ABN 16 136 435 875