EMC certification and accreditation programs in the US Navy

The approach that was proposed by the US Navy has focused on the need for accreditation in two areas of EMC technical support, personnel providing direct technical support and laboratories doing MIL-STD-462 acceptance testing. Certification of personnel to a recognized and widely accepted standard would provide a basis for assuring that contractors and their Government counterparts were competent to provide technical advice on difficult issues. It would also provide a benchmark for Government use in training or replacing professional and technical staff. Accreditation of laboratories, both public and private, would help ensure that acceptance testing was performed according to a consistent standard. The responsibility for development of the EMC engineer and technician certification process was assigned to NAVAIR. NAVAIR issued an instruction establishing certification of engineers and technicians by the National Association of Radio and Telecommunications Engineers (NARTE), and accreditation of EMC test laboratories by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)