Product Compliance - The Australian RCM

A one day course covering the Regulatory Compliance Mark and more

Cost: $650 + GST

Dates: Next dates TBA

Venue: Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron at St Kilda

Location:  2 Pier Rd, St Kilda VIC 3182

Parking: All day for $13

Start time: 9:15 AM to 4:30 PM

Catering: Lunch, morning and afternoon tea provided

Booking:  Numbers are limited so please call us to secure your place.

Presenter's Profiles

Cornelius Chidlow

Cornelius is the Principal Consultant of Stradia Pty Ltd and has been involved with C-Tick, RCM and compliance engineering for 26 years.  He was a Competent Body under the Australian Radio Communication Act.

John Devlin

John is the Technical Manager of Stradia and has had a long association with design and testing for EMC and PCB design. This includes equipment for defense, aerospace, communications, industrial processing machinery and a wide variety of electronic products.

Who should attend

Quality Managers, Sales and Account Managers, Technical Managers,  Engineers and Technicians

The course covers:

General Product Safety

The overarching legislation for product safety in Australia is introduced.  This is a good starting place for compliance as straight away you are told it is based on products and types of products.  There is no mention of systems or installations just products.  At the federal level the ACCC sets the policy and is responsible for implementing Australian Consumer Law.  From this the states and territories develop their own policies. 

Safety and compatibility are closely related.  While the ACMA is not responsible for safety it does mandate standards and the idea of mandating standards comes from the ACCC.  The ACCC also introduces the idea of risk and risk models and seeks to reduce risk through process and voluntary conformity.  It seeks to inform rather than punish.   One key idea is that the higher the risk the product presents to the consumer the higher the level of conformity the supplier must demonstrate. 

For this course two branches are developed the first related to the ACMAs regulations and the second to the States and Territories for electrical safety and Energy Efficiency.

The concept of compliance through technical documentation is introduced linking it to mandated standards and labelling.  Testing and the test report are the basis of the compliance documents and the concepts of accreditation and MRA are introduced to explain how confidence in testing is achieved.

 The regulations processes to be covered

  • ACMA

  • Electrical safety

  • Machinery Safety - not RCM

  • Energy Efficiency - not RCM

To understand the regulations it is necessary to have an understanding of the fundamental concepts around which the legislation is written.

For this course we deal with EMC, Radio Communication, EM Hazards to Humans, electrical safety, machinery safety and energy efficiency.

Electromagnetic Theory

 The fundamental concepts are introduced and related to testing of EM fields.

The Fundamentals of Electrical Safety

The physical reasons why an electric shock takes place are explained covering body resistance and the four categories of effects of electric current on the human body

The basic standard for electrical safety in Australia is explained.  It requires all products placed on the market or brought into service to be safe.

 The technical basics are explained and examples of verification and the test method for each are given.

Regulatory Compliance Mark (RCM) Process

 The reason for the RCM and what it means to place it on a product is explained.

 The five subject and categories of RCM compliance are introduced.

 The reason for and the contents of the compliance folder are covered.

 The example of a GSM wireless router is used as it covers all 5 categories of compliance for the RCM.

 The applicable standards are briefly shown and example test report and an example Declaration of Conformity

The five categories of compliance are covered in more detail.  EMC is given the most attention and details of a test report are explained.

The other categories are covered form and administrative view only as the technical content for each requires a strong technical background in communication theory and electromagnetic fundamentals that cannot be covered in a course like this.

Electrical Equipment Safety

There are two systems in Australia

The administrative process of the electrical safety legislation is explained for NSW, SA, WA, Tasmania and the territories.

 A compliance certificate is shown and explained.   It is stated that it is common to both systems.

 The Qld and Victorian EESS is explained

The EESS database is shown

The Stradia database is shown for the reason that it is more comprehensive and allows for more information across a large range of product types and compliance types including those other than Australian.

It is stated that the MRAs between the states and territories requires that each accept the others approvals.  Both systems have databases and it is recommended that registration on the NSW database and EESS database be done for each product.    There are some administrative differences in the registration process the main being classification of the products into declared and non-declared vs. Levels 1, 2, 3.

Machine Safety

 This is introduced to show how electrical safety is covered by other important regulators in each state and territory.

Energy Efficiency 

 The fundamentals and the process with one example

 Homework question

 A homework question is given to cover the ACMA and electrical safety requirements.  The answer will be given on the website,

 Q&A

Stradia Pty Ltd reserves the right to exclude any party or person from the course based on commercial in confidence including competitors.

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