Annual calibration plans
Turnaround
- Standard lead time
- 10 working days from receipt
- Express service
- Available on request, subject to laboratory schedule — quoted at booking
- Loan instrument during calibration
- On request, subject to availability
- Send with the instrument
- Accessories that affect the reading — preamplifier, extension cable, windscreen — and the date of the last calibration
A sound level meter is bought once and calibrated for fifteen years. Most organisations track those due dates in a spreadsheet that nobody owns, and discover the lapse during an audit.
What the plan gives you
- A named asset register: every instrument, serial number, calibration date and due date
- Automatic reminders before each due date
- Scheduled annual calibration slots booked in advance
- Coordinated collection and return
- Priority turnaround
- Incoming inspection and fault diagnosis on every visit
- Repair quoted before work starts, with recalibration after repair
- Loan equipment during calibration, subject to availability
- Full certificate history retained and retrievable
Nobody sets the interval for you
A question we are asked constantly: how often does the law say I must calibrate? The honest answer is that in almost every case it does not say. ISO/IEC 17025 puts the responsibility on the user of the instrument to establish an interval that keeps the measurement fit for its purpose, and to be able to justify it. A twelve-month interval is the near-universal default not because a standard mandates it, but because it is short enough that drift stays inside tolerance for most instruments and long enough to be affordable.
That means the interval is a decision you own, and an auditor can ask you to defend it. An instrument used daily on construction sites in Bangkok humidity does not have the same risk profile as one used twice a year in an office. Where the evidence supports it, a plan can run different intervals for different instruments — and the history of previous results is what supports it.
What an expired certificate actually costs
The cost is not the recalibration. It is that the measurements you made while the certificate was expired have no support behind them. If those measurements went into a compliance report, an environmental impact assessment, a tender submission or a dispute, they can be challenged — and the challenge is easy to make and hard to answer, because the date on the certificate is a matter of record.
This is why the value of a plan is not the discount. It is that the due date never arrives as a surprise, and that when someone asks you to produce the evidence, it exists.
Does the law in Thailand require annual calibration?
For most acoustic measurement work no statute names a fixed interval. What is required is that the instrument is traceably calibrated and that you can justify the interval you chose. Twelve months is the accepted default. Where a specific regulation, client specification or management system does name an interval, that takes precedence.
What happens if an instrument fails at its annual calibration?
You are told before any work is done, with the as-found result. That as-found result matters: it is what lets you judge whether measurements made since the last calibration are still defensible. An instrument that failed by a small margin at one band is a very different situation from one that failed across the range, and you cannot make that judgement without the as-found data.
Can a plan cover instruments at more than one site?
Yes. The register is by instrument and serial number, not by location. Multi-site organisations are usually the ones with the worst visibility of what they own, which is exactly the problem a register solves.