Eurofins Expert Services Helps Teräspyörä-Steelwheel with Authorizing
Eurofins Expert Services is the designated body for Teräspyörä-Steelwheel’s railway equipment. In the world of industrial projects, it is crucial that the inspections are done with expertise, flexibility, and speed.
Teräspyörä-Steelwheel Ltd. is a railway specialist operating in Kouvola. The company manufactures new rolling stock for railways as well as carrying out repairs and alterations to them. In the spring of 2020 and in line with national requirements, inspection and assessment work was now no longer the responsibility of the authorising authority, and Teräspyörä-Steelwheel needed a new inspection body.
Eurofins Expert Services was an easy choice as designated body for the authorising authority. Not only has it already been an accredited notified body (NoBo) for some time, but the firm is also an accredited ISA assessment body for ensuring compliance with CSM regulations and EN standards.
Teräspyörä-Steelwheel got in touch with Eurofins Expert Services after having had previous good experiences with them, and they have now been the designated body in several authorising processes:
‘Our task as designated body is to evaluate new rolling stock and to check that none of the changes or upgrades made to it clash with national requirements’, says Mika Riihimaa, System Safety Manager at Eurofins Expert Services. ‘After the inspection, Teräspyörä-Steelwheel can then apply to Traficom for authorisation to place the equipment on the market’.
Eurofins Expert Services works with Comatec Mobility Ltd to carry out Teräspyörä-Steelwheel’s inspections. The first time Teräspyörä-Steelwheel and Eurofins Expert Services began working together, it was to modify railway equipment and overhaul a robot locomotive:
‘It hasn’t been long but we’ve already worked together on several assignments’, says Jorma Nordfors, Comatec Mobility's Inspections Expert. ‘Our inspection began in the spring by checking the equipment performs appropriately and that the systems in place conform to the specifications laid out in the documentation.’
Technical safety and reliability assured by experts
Working with Teräspyörä-Steelwheel involves individual customers, inspecting individual machines, and coping with the constant rush. This is why flexibility, expertise and speed are crucial requirements for a designated industrial body:
‘Our schedules are always very tight because our customers are either working in railway construction or as industry contractors’, says Teräspyörä-Steelwheel’s Quality Manager, Eero Heinonen. ‘And Eurofins Expert Services has adapted well to both our schedules and those of the customer’.
An inspection body needs to check that everything is right so that equipment can be placed on the market in the knowledge it is reliably safe. For Heinonen it is Eurofins Expert Services’ expertise that really counts here:
‘Eurofins Expert Services are indeed experts, that is where their strength lies: they know our world and our business, even though we are specialists in the already specialist railway industry. There is no need to explain when people working together understand each other’.
Both Teräspyörä-Steelwheel and Eurofins Expert Services value the open interaction in their partnership. Clear and open interaction makes the partnership more responsive:
‘Good interaction makes working with Eurofins Expert Services easy. We work well together, and we’ve got many new joint projects lined up and ready to go’, notes Heinonen happily. ‘We are very satisfied and look forward to carrying on the partnership’.
‘Working with Teräspyörä-Steelwheel is very easy, it’s flexible and it’s open. They have a good team with a lot of knowledge, and they know how things work. In a very short time, we already have some well-established routines’, adds Riihimaa, ‘and this makes working together much easier’.
Meeting national requirements in inspections and assessments – what’s it about?
When new equipment is being launched or when a certain number of changes have been made to old equipment, authorisation is needed before it can be placed on the market. Depending on the case, the equipment must be either…
- verified for EU conformity by a notified body and national conformity by a designated body; or
- checked for national compliance.
In addition to these, an independent safety assessment (ISA) may also be required for risk management to check the railway system still conforms with CSM regulations in the event of a significant change. At Eurofins Expert Services, we can provide a comprehensive range of other testing and inspection services related to the mandatory approval of rolling stock.
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For more information please contact
Mika Riihimaa
Tel. + 358 40 555 3630
MikaRiihimaa@eurofins.fi
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