Recently, the Department of Policies and Regulations of the State Administration of Work Safety ("SAWS") has formulated and issued the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Safety Evaluation Institutions and Work Safety Testing and Inspection Institutions (Draft for Review) for public comments by November 12, 2017.
The Draft for Review expressly states that any institution undertaking statutory safety evaluations should meet ten requirements, including "having independent corporate legal personality and possessing fixed assets valued at over ten million yuan", while an institution undertaking statutory tests and inspections of work safety should fulfill nine conditions, one of which reads "its chief, technical heads and quality assurance heads who are in charge of such tests and inspections should have obtained senior technical titles and worked in relevant areas for over eight years". According to the Draft for Review, if an institution applies for the first time for becoming qualified as an evaluation and inspection institution for a single industry (field), the qualification certificate may be issued first and the examination process comes next. A qualification certificate shall remain valid for five years. Additionally, the Draft for Review prescribes that safety evaluation institutions and work safety inspection institutions, as well as their practitioners, should not commit any of nine acts, such as "the head of the safety evaluation project and the inspectors failing to carry out safety evaluating activities on the spot".