Record personnel technical authorisations

Control a member's authorised activities, scope, limits, supporting evidence, and validity period.

Audit readiness For Owner, Administrator, Quality manager, Calibration manager, Calibration engineer About 7 minutes to read

Open Quality → Technical authorisations, or Quality evidence → Personnel authorisations. These records also support internal calibration and verification; they do not require an ISO 17025 accreditation persona. Displayed people use names and organisation roles. An application role still does not establish technical competence.

A personnel technical authorisation records what an organisation member is authorised to do, within which scope and limits, and for what period. It is separate from the member's application role and permissions. A calibration engineer role does not by itself prove competence or technical authorisation.

Prerequisites

Select the organisation that employs or controls the person.
Ensure the person has an active organisation membership.
Define the authorised activity, technical scope, and any limits.
Agree the effective date and required expiry date.
Upload and approve at least one controlled PDF evidence revision that supports the authorisation.
Have technical authorisation management permission.
Arrange for an authorised decision-maker who is independent of the person receiving the authorisation.

Create the draft authorisation

Select Prepare competence evidence here to use the controlled evidence library without leaving your authorisation entries. The upload defaults to Personnel competence. Uploading creates a draft; a different eligible evidence approver must review the PDF before its revision can support an authorisation. Select Return to authorisation and refresh approved evidence when review is complete. Your member, activity, scope, limits and dates remain in the form.

When the activity follows a controlled method, expand Use the activity from an approved method and select Find approved methods. Only the active procedure's current approved revision is offered. Selecting it copies its activity reference, not a competence decision. The reviewer separately checks the person's competence evidence against that method's scope and limits.

Open Calibration.
Open Technical authorisations.
Start a new authorisation.
Select the organisation member.
Enter the Activity reference.
Enter the Authorisation scope.
Record any limits on methods, ranges, equipment, locations, supervision, or approval activity.
Enter the effective date and required expiry date.
Select the approved supporting document revisions that evidence competence or the authorisation decision.
Save the authorisation as a draft.

Use a scope that is specific enough to distinguish what the person may and may not do. Do not place an authorisation in a broad application role merely to avoid recording technical limits.

While a draft or revision is being saved, its fields are locked to prevent later edits being mistaken for saved evidence. A failed or conflicting save keeps the entered member, activity, scope, limits, dates and supporting selections in the open form. Review the refusal and current record before retrying. These unsaved entries are not a saved server draft; save before leaving or signing out. Required approved evidence and independent activation remain mandatory.

Activate the authorisation

Open the draft authorisation.
Review the member, activity reference, scope, limits, dates, and supporting evidence.
Confirm that the proposed effective and expiry dates are correct.
Select Activate, review the exact revision summary, and enter the required reason and Independent review statement.
Complete the organisation signature requirement and confirm activation.

Activation records who authorised the scope. The current status becomes active according to the controlled lifecycle and dates; it does not change the member's application permissions.

Maintain the lifecycle

The displayed lifecycle states are:

draft: prepared but not yet active
active: current technical authorisation
suspended: temporarily unavailable
expired: no longer current after its validity ends or an expiry action
superseded: replaced by a later controlled authorisation

Use the available lifecycle action rather than editing the status in ordinary fields. Record the required reason for suspension, expiry, supersession, or another controlled transition.

When an active authorisation's scope, limits, dates, or supporting evidence need revision:

Select Edit.
Update the controlled fields.
Enter the Revision reason.
Select Save revision.
Review the updated record and activate it again when appropriate.

Saving a controlled revision returns the authorisation to draft for activation review. Previous revisions remain retained; the edit does not silently change an active technical decision.

Review expiry

Regularly filter or review authorisations approaching their expiry date.
Verify competence and supporting evidence before extending or replacing an authorisation.
Create a controlled revision with the new dates and evidence.
Complete activation review before relying on the revised authorisation.
Leave expired or superseded records in history.

An expired authorisation remains evidence of the earlier authorised period. It must not be presented as current authority.

Expected result

The member has a traceable technical authorisation showing the activity, scope, limits, supporting evidence, authoriser, effective date, expiry date, lifecycle status, and revision history. Application access remains governed separately by organisation membership permissions.

Warnings

Never infer technical competence from an application role, job title, or ability to use a screen.
Supporting evidence must be a current approved controlled revision when it is selected and activated. Its effective date must have arrived, its expiry must not have passed, and its parent document must not be archived. A review refusal names the evidence that needs attention; uploading a newer draft does not silently substitute it for an approved revision.
An expiry date in the future does not prove continuing competence; follow the organisation's review process.
Do not overwrite an expired, suspended, or superseded record to make it appear continuously active.

Permissions and separation of duties

Technical authorisation read and management permissions are separate from evidence approval, calibration-event approval, and dossier review. The subject of an authorisation must not authorise themselves. An application owner remains subject to the technical-authorisation decision and separation-of-duties rules.

If an action is unavailable, check the membership status, authorisation lifecycle, supporting evidence status, effective permission, and whether the intended decision-maker is independent.

Next steps

Independent activation and useful choices

Initial activation, material revisions and restoration after suspension require a reviewer who is a different underlying person from both the recipient and the person preparing the current revision. Application ownership or organisation size does not exempt self-approval. Add an eligible reviewer, including an external reviewer with appropriate organisation membership, when needed. Suspension remains immediately available to an authorised manager. Existing active records retain their history and are identified for review at the next controlled change.

The authorisation view shows reviewer ineligibility and preparation/approval details. Readers see their own authorisations without administrative choices. Managers can search and page through approved supporting evidence, retaining selections between searches. Use Find activities to reuse an existing activity reference across authorisations, procedures and requirement overrides; Create a new activity reference records a distinct reference when saving. Matching ignores case and repeated spaces without merging differently named activities.

Add evidence without losing your form

Select Upload or review supporting evidence. The evidence library opens in a new window while your authorisation form keeps its entries. Upload and arrange independent approval of the competence, training or procedure evidence. Return to the authorisation form, search the approved evidence again, and select the exact retained revision.

New and revised authorisations require both approved supporting evidence and an expiry date. Older authorisations retain their original history; any displayed evidence-review gaps must be resolved before controlled revision or restoration. Metra matches the activity and checks dates and source validity, while the reviewer must confirm that the evidence covers the stated procedures, ranges, sites, supervision and other limits. Free-text scope never establishes competence automatically.

Field and internal work

Review each authorisation’s explicit laboratory/on-site/either scope alongside the activity and limits. Unspecified legacy scope does not permit on-site work. See on-site controlled work.

Recommended next guides

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