Inmetro / Cgcre Audit Preparation for Inspection Companies
A Inmetro / Cgcre audit runs in 7 stages, beginning with formal application to an organismo de certificação de produtos (ocp) established in.. Inmetro, a federal body under the Ministério do Desenvolvimento, Indústria, Comércio e Serviços; accreditation is performed by its Coordenação Geral de Acreditação (Cgcre), described by Inmetro as the only accreditation body recognised by the Brazilian government tests the system by sampling finished work backwards to.
Cgcre is the gatekeeper for anything in Brazil entitled to be called accredited. It accredits inspection bodies against ABNT NBR ISO/IEC 17020, testing and calibration laboratories against ISO/IEC 17025, personnel certification bodies against ISO/IEC 17024, product certification bodies against ISO/IEC 17065 and validation/verification bodies against ISO/IEC 17029. For an inspection service provider, accreditation converts a technically competent crew into a report a regulator or a demanding client accepts without argument. Separately, Inmetro owns the SPIE conformity assessment requirements that NR-13 makes available to equipment owners, consolidated in Portaria Inmetro nº 62 of 31 March 2026 — the document that decides, in practice, what a Brazilian plant demands of its NDT subcontractors. What separates firms that clear an audit from firms that collect findings is not the quality of the documentation but whether it describes what actually happens.
Source: Portaria Inmetro nº 62, de 31 de março de 2026, 'Aprova a Instrução Normativa Inmetro e os Requisitos de Avaliação da Conformidade para os Serviços Próprios de Inspeção de Equipamentos – Consolidado', Annexes I and II, extracted and read directly; it cites Consulta Pública nº 17 of 21 November 2024 (DOU 11 December 2024) and Processo SEI nº 0052600.011368/2022-51, and adopts Portaria Inmetro nº 200/2021 (Requisitos Gerais de Certificação de Produtos, RGCP) as its general certification rules. Cgcre's status as sole recognised accreditation body and the conformity assessment body types and standards from Inmetro's accreditation pages on gov.br. Limitation: the inspection-body scope acronyms — including OIA-END for non-destructive testing and OIA-OG for oil and gas fabrication — come from Inmetro's inspection body accreditation page, but the ftp.inmetro.gov.br and www4.inmetro.gov.br hosts were unreachable from this environment on 21 August 2026, so the scope list was not re-read against the primary page, no accreditation counts are stated, and the accreditation surveillance cycle for OIA is not asserted. Verified 21 August 2026.
| Stage | What happens | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 | Formal application to an Organismo de Certificação de Produtos (OCP) established in Brazil and accredited by Inmetro, submitting the establishment. | Where the paperwork is tested against itself |
| Stage 2 | Initial audit planning — the OCP builds the audit plan, verifies the inspection programme including any overdue items, and defines. | Where the paperwork is tested against practice |
| Stage 3 | On-site initial audit against the checklist, with the inspection programme assessed in full and the remaining requirements assessed by sampling. | Where the paperwork is tested against practice |
| Stage 4 | Non-conformity treatment — Category A RGI deviations must be corrected during the audit period and the audit is interrupted if. | Where the paperwork is tested against practice |
| Stage 5 | Critical analysis and decision by a Certification Commission constituted by the OCP with tripartite, equal representation of the Ministério do. | Where the paperwork is tested against practice |
| Stage 6 | Certificate of Conformity issued, valid 48 months from the date of issue. | Where the paperwork is tested against practice |
| Stage 7 | Maintenance audits every 12 months from certificate issue, and recertification concluded before the certificate expires — planned like a maintenance. | Where the paperwork is tested against practice |
| Renewal | SPIE certificates are valid for 48 months from issue (clause 6.2.5.3). Maintenance audits run every 12 months from the certificate date. That may be extended to 18 months only where all four conditions hold: certified for at least two certification cycles; no suspension in the last two cycles; no warning in the last cycle; and no Category A non-conformities in the last cycle. The extension takes effect only from the start of the cycle following the request and can be revoked at any time following a major accident, a warning or a suspension. Recertification must be concluded before the current certificate expires. Portaria Inmetro nº 62/2026 revokes Portarias Inmetro nº 537/2015, nº 582/2015, nº 177/2023 and nº 382/2023 twelve months after it takes effect; certificates already issued are updated to reference it at the next evaluation stage, and adoption of INI or a Safety Instrumented System by a certified SPIE requires a specific-scope audit. | Diarised from the certificate date, not the last audit |
How long does Inmetro / Cgcre audit preparation take?
Document work — the written practice, procedures and quality manual — takes weeks. What cannot be compressed is documented experience and records history: on-the-job hours accrue in real time, and calibration and certification history cannot be back-filled. Firms that start when the audit is scheduled rather than announced clear it without findings.
What does Inmetro, a federal body under the Ministério do Desenvolvimento, Indústria, Comércio e Serviços; accreditation is performed by its Coordenação Geral de Acreditação (Cgcre), described by Inmetro as the only accreditation body recognised by the Brazilian government look at first?
Records, not manuals. A manual states intent; records show practice. The usual opening move is to take a completed job and trace it back to the technician's certification, the instrument's calibration, the approved procedure and the report — and see whether all four reconcile.
What are the most common Inmetro / Cgcre findings?
Contracted NDT reports annexed to the consolidated inspection report but neither referenced nor technically validated by the responsible PLH, contrary to the SPIE reporting rule, No documented criteria for evaluating the performance of contracted inspection services, or no records of those evaluations (clause 9.2), Inspection equipment list incomplete, or calibration not traceable to nationally or internationally recognised standards with no documented and periodically reviewed alternative basis (clause 10.5), Repeated delays in executing the inspection plan detected across successive audit cycles. Almost all of them are evidence problems rather than capability problems: the work was done correctly and the proof was not kept, or was kept somewhere the firm could not retrieve during the audit.
Can a consultant attend the Inmetro / Cgcre audit?
Yes, and it changes the outcome. Someone who has sat through the same audit at other firms answers in the auditor's own terms, produces the right record without a search, and stops a clarification turning into a finding. The firm still owns every answer — the consultant does not speak for it.
What happens after a Inmetro / Cgcre finding?
A corrective action with a deadline, and evidence of closure at the next audit. Repeat findings are treated far more seriously than first ones, because they show the corrective-action system itself is not working.
Does Inmetro / Cgcre require a pre-audit or gap assessment?
Not as a requirement, but the arithmetic favours it: a gap assessment finds the same evidence problems the auditor would, without the finding attached, and while there is still time to fix them. Firms entering their first Inmetro / Cgcre audit blind typically collect findings that a sampling exercise would have caught.
What the auditor asks to see
- Solicitação formal de certificação to the OCP, with a detailed description of the establishment, its location, general layout and the geographic distribution of operating units (SPIE clause 6.2)
- Information on activities performed by third parties and outsourced installations capable of affecting the certification, including equipment connected to SPIE equipment
- Types and quantities of equipment controlled, NR-13 classification, available human resources with their locations, functions and competences
- Programa e plano de inspeção, with evidence of minimum compliance with the programme
- Procedimentos escritos for the principal activities performed
- Arquivo técnico — the maintained, current technical file needed to satisfy NR-13, with mechanisms to distribute information on request
- Registros de qualificação e certificação for own and contracted personnel, including ABNT NBR NM ISO 9712 certificates for NDT inspectors
- Lista atualizada da aparelhagem de inspeção with calibration records and traceability to nationally or internationally recognised standards
- Registros de auditorias internas and the internal audit procedure covering auditor qualification, experience and independence
- Relatório de inspeção consolidado signed by the PLH, with contracted NDT reports annexed, referenced and technically validated by that PLH
Findings to close before the audit
- Contracted NDT reports annexed to the consolidated inspection report but neither referenced nor technically validated by the responsible PLH, contrary to the SPIE reporting rule
- No documented criteria for evaluating the performance of contracted inspection services, or no records of those evaluations (clause 9.2)
- Inspection equipment list incomplete, or calibration not traceable to nationally or internationally recognised standards with no documented and periodically reviewed alternative basis (clause 10.5)
- Repeated delays in executing the inspection plan detected across successive audit cycles
- NDT technicians certified to a scheme other than ABNT NBR NM ISO 9712 with no justification under the clause 5.1.3.12 exception for methods lacking national standards
- Non-intrusive or risk-based inspection used to define or postpone intervals before the specific-scope audit required by clause 6.7
- Safety valve opening-pressure tests exceeding the 12-month maximum applied to each boiler
- No dedicated PLH, or inspection staff lacking the exclusive dedication to inspection, integrity assessment and remaining-life activities that NR-13 Annex II requires
Related: the Inmetro / Cgcre overview, outsourced ASNT Level III cover, written practice development, NDT procedure development, a programme gap assessment, interim Level III cover.