The Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology announced today that the implementation date for the Fastener Quality Act of 1990—scheduled for July 26, 1998—is being extended because the agency projects that there will be an insufficient number of laboratories accredited in time to perform the volume of inspection and testing required by the Act. A Federal Register notice detailing the extension will be published shortly.
NIST is extending the FQA implementation date by 90 days to allow most of the remainder of the nearly 580 laboratories who have applied for accreditation to complete the process. The new date is Oct. 25, 1998. Approximately 250 laboratories have been accredited to date.
For more information on the FQA and the implementation date extension, contact Subhas G. Malghan, (301) 975-5120, fax: (301) 975-5414. Additional information—including the current list of accredited testing laboratories—is available on the FQA web site at http://www.nist.gov/fqa.