System proposal for implementation of risk management in the context of ISO/IEC 17025

Many higher education institutions in the world have testing laboratories linked, or not, to their teaching and/or research programs. However, only a small proportion of these laboratories have accreditation in accordance with the ISO/IEC 17025 standard. The ISO/IEC 17025 establishes the management and technical requirements necessary for the implementation and maintenance of a quality management system (QMS) in laboratories that perform testing, calibration and/or sampling activities, being used by them to demonstrate their competence in carrying out their activities. One of the requirements of the current version of the standard is the need to carry out risk management (RM), introduced with the demand for risk-based thinking. The objective of this research was to propose a system for the implementation of RM in laboratories, through mapping, identification, classification, critical analysis, and treatment of risks. The research considered the history of actions taken, the risks verified by the laboratory team, the evaluation of their impacts and the probabilities of their occurrence, their classification and the identification of actions necessary to accept, mitigate or eliminate these risks. The system proposed was applied in a testing laboratory at a university in southern Brazil, enabling the maintenance of its accreditation.