Declarations of Conformity/Incorporation: Get the Lawyers Involved

If you are thinking the Essential Health and Safety Requirements of the EU CE Directives (or OSHA, or Canadian, or Australian, et al) are just a checklist, you might consider this; six years after the Deep Horizons platform oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, trials are still beginning.  I read a small news bye-line story about a manager on the rig being found 'not guilty' of charges against him.  So I searched the Internet.  Three stories came up for this over the last three months.  Five more people go on trial this week.

Further, the trial of the 'former' Massey Energy CEO ended yesterday (4/6/16).  Safety violations were found to be the cause of twenty-three deaths in a mine explosion in West Virginia.  The CEO is sentenced to a year in jail.

Did you read about the collapse of the new highway in India just this week?  Within a day, five of the leading project engineers were arrested.

Declaring conformity is accepting liability for your product.  The wise leader is giving the legal department an opportunity to help up front with this 'administrative' requirement that goes to the very foundation of how the company's product is built.  The wise project manager, project engineer, and Quality engineers realize this is not something they should be working on alone.  Pass the word and make sure your processes include the company legal department.

Seems so simple.  Is it so in your company?