About UMA
A certification body and nothing else. UMA audits management systems against international standards, decides whether they conform, and publishes the result.
UMA operates to ISO/IEC 17021-1. Accreditation by EIAC has not yet been granted, and UMA does not yet issue accredited certification.
What this means for you
Accreditation is a certification body being audited itself. An accreditation body assesses whether we are competent, impartial and consistent — it is the check on the checker. UMA is working towards accreditation by EIAC and has not yet been granted it.
Until it is granted, a certificate from UMA is not accredited certification. If a customer, a tender or a regulator requires accredited certification, we are not yet able to meet that requirement, and you should not engage us on the assumption that we will be by a particular date.
What we do now is operate to ISO/IEC 17021-1 in full — the same standard we will be assessed against — so that the way we audit does not change when accreditation arrives.
You will not find an accreditation symbol anywhere on this site, or on any certificate we issue, until accreditation has actually been granted. A body that implies accreditation it does not hold has told you what its certificates are worth.
ISO/IEC 27001
Information security
ADHICS
Healthcare information security, Abu Dhabi
ISO/IEC 42001
Artificial intelligence
ISO 9001
Quality management
ISO 14001
Environmental management
ISO 45001
Occupational health and safety
We certify the management system — not your products, not your services, and not your people. What each standard covers →
A small body, deliberately
UMA is a certification body and nothing else. It has four auditors, its own management system covering impartiality, competence, audit conduct, certification decisions, appeals, complaints and records, and its own infrastructure, connected to no other business.
Being small has one consequence we will not dress up. Where independence requires someone who was not involved and nobody inside UMA qualifies, we engage a competent person from outside and record who they were. That applies to certification decisions on audits our General Manager led, and to appeals. It is a cost we accept rather than a rule we work around.
Competence is a gate, not a claim
An auditor is authorised for a specific standard only once there is evidence they are competent in it — qualification, training, and audits performed under observation. Without a current authorisation for the standard in question, an auditor cannot be assigned to your audit at all. This is enforced in the system rather than left to judgement.
It follows that we will sometimes tell you we cannot audit something yet. We would rather say that than send someone who is learning on your certificate.
Where we are
UMA is registered and operates from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Being an Abu Dhabi body matters most for ADHICS — the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi standard — where the entities being certified, the regulator and the certification body are in the same jurisdiction.