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Our Impartiality Commitment by Top management

As a commitment to maintain confidence and credibility in our EPD program operating process, EPD NETWROKS recognises the importance of safeguarding impartiality in its EPD verification and program operating activities, manages any potential conflict of interests and ensures the objectivity of the vertification process.

Our policy as the EPD program operator is to provide confidence, to act and to be perceived impartial by all parties that have an interest in certification, such as our clients, customers of our certified clients, government, non-government organisation, consumers and community.

In order to ensure the impartiality, it is our policy to base our decisions on objective evidence of conformity with the reference standards and/or documents, without being influenced by other interests or parties.

EPD NETWROKS maintains systems to ensure the principles of impartiality are upheld. Measures used by EPD NETWROKS to ensure impartiality include:

•  The appointment of independent vertification decision-making personnel, individually assigned for each specific product vertification decision. Personnel is assigned in a manner that ensures they were not involved in the organisation whose vertification status is under review and neither in the assigned assessment team for the respective organisation, in a manner that could affect impartiality;

• The use of competent personnel, acting impartially and not allowing commercial, financial or other pressures to affect impartiality, throughout the vertification processes (including audit processes and vertification decision making processes);

• The awareness and accountability of the personnel involved in the vertification processes (including audit processes) through binding agreements related to impartiality and conflict of interests and the obligation to reveal any situations which might influence impartiality or generate a conflict of interests;

• The non-involvement of EPD NETWROKS or its Representatives in the provision of any consultancy services or internal audit services to its vertified clients;

• The establishment of an impartiality committee, composed of parties interested in vertification, aimed at reviewing the impartiality and independence of the audit, vertification and decision-making processes and counteracting any tendency on the part of EPD NETWROKS to allow commercial or other considerations to prevent the consistent objective provision of vertification services. The impartiality committee is empowered and reports directly to the top management. 

This policy is applicable to EPD NETWROKS management, committee members and personnel, either directly employed or acting on behalf of EPD NETWROKS (including verifiers, technical specialists, translators, observers, etc.).