Forest Certification
» Participation
Participation
SFI Program Participation
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Central to the SFI Program is the verification of a Program Participant's forest management operation. The SFI Verification/Certification Principles and Procedures provide direction to program participants, verifiers and other interested parties about the principles and procedures required for verification. The SFI Verification Process includes both first- and second-party verification--which can be performed by a company itself, or its business partners--as well as independent third-party certification of conformance to the SFI Standard. It is the third-party certification that most members opt to pursue, and this involves a professional audit by a verification team trained in forestry and business auditing techniques.
For a third-party certification, the verification team must be wholly independent to ensure its objectivity throughout the verification process. The selection of the verification team members is at the discretion of the lead verifier in consultation with the program participant. Where the forestry organization chooses independent third-party verification, the verifier shall be totally independent of the organization being verified. A third-party verifier shall not be involved in consulting activities that provide services to design, implement or maintain the SFI Program being verified. Verification organizations, their employees, subcontractors and other agents involved in any SFI verification activity (assessment, audit or re-assessment) shall not have been involved in development of a program participant's SFI Program nor shall a verifier have direct financial
interest in the program participant's organization.
Third-party verification involves a number of stages, but central to the effort is the independent collection of evidence. A full and factual determination of findings is possible only when an adequate amount of evidence has been gathered. Evidence will be compiled by examination of operating procedures, study of materials relating to forestry practices, and on-the-ground examination of field performance, and through meetings with employees, contractors and other third parties (e.g., government agencies, community groups, conservation organizations), as appropriate, to determine conformance to the Standard. The verification team must ensure that all sampling and measurement procedures are of high quality.
The verification team will carefully review the evidence to determine whether the organization's performance conforms to the SFI Standard. They determine conformance to the SFI Standard based upon both a review of documentation and field-level assessments of representative sites. At the conclusion of the third-party verification process, a written report is created by the lead verifier, and a formal certificate of conformance is issued.