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Calibration planning

Create a calibration requirement

Define, review, and activate a recurring calibration schedule for an equipment item.

Calibration planning For Owner, Administrator, Quality manager

Before this guide: Register equipment

Create a calibration requirement

From the equipment detail page, select Add requirement. The guided page offers two methods:

  • Use existing template to apply a shared, approved requirement template to this equipment.
  • Create custom requirement to build a unique requirement for this equipment only.

Choose the method that best matches how you want the policy governed. Don’t duplicate a shared policy as a custom one unless you need a true one-off variation.

A calibration requirement is a repeating job definition for one equipment item. It is separate from the events that record completed work. Create a separate requirement for each recurring obligation.

For reusable policy across several equipment items, use requirement templates and bulk assignment.

Prerequisites

  • Select the organisation that owns the equipment.
  • Register the equipment and ensure it is not retired or archived.
  • Make the equipment active, quarantined, or out of service before activating its requirement.
  • Decide the calibration type, interval, warning period, accreditation need, risk level, procedure policy, and acceptance criteria.
  • Have an approved initial due date.
  • Confirm you have permission to create and manage calibration requirements.

If you choose internal calibration, verification, or a functional check and no approved procedure exists, Metra shows a prerequisite warning instead of leaving you with an empty procedure selector.

Use Create procedure when authorised, or View procedures with read-only access. The procedure workflow opens separately so your in-progress requirement stays open.

Review downstream evidence before saving

The form shows a plain-language summary as you select measurement, uncertainty, standard, and conformity policies.

Before saving, resolve any prerequisites listed. For example:

  • calculated uncertainty needs an approved uncertainty budget,
  • uncertainty and conformity checks need structured measurements,
  • and required standards may be needed for some methods.

Create the requirement

  1. Open Equipment and choose the equipment item.
  2. Open Requirements.
  3. Select Add requirement.
  4. Enter a clear requirement name. Names must be unique for that equipment.
  5. Choose calibration type and accreditation requirement.
  6. Enter interval in days, weeks, months, or years.
  7. Set the warning period (when it appears as due soon).
  8. Select risk level and optional responsible member.
  9. Review the procedure policy derived from the calibration type.
  10. Enter provider method or specification for external calibration.
  11. Controlled-procedure requirements inherit the approved revision's activity reference. For external-method work, enter an exact Required authorisation activity reference when technical-authorisation matching is required; leave it blank only when no activity match applies.
  12. Enter initial due date when ready to activate.
  13. Optionally select Save this policy as a reusable template if you can create templates.
  14. Review the live What every calibration will require summary.
  15. Select Create as draft to review first, or Create and activate when all prerequisites pass.

Draft requirements do not contribute an active due status yet. Direct activation opens first as draft, then performs the same controlled activation action.

Review and activate the schedule

  1. Open the draft requirement.
  2. Check interval, warning period, pinned procedure revision, acceptance criteria, and initial due date.
  3. Confirm equipment is eligible.
  4. Select Activate.

Activation sets the starting due date and the requirement starts showing as current, due soon, due, or overdue according to the site local date.

Understand dates and timezones

Due dates are calendar dates, not timestamps. Metra uses the timezone of the equipment's current site and displays the site date used for the calculation.

Intervals use calendar arithmetic. Months are not treated as 30 days, and years are not treated as 365 days. End-of-month dates are aligned correctly, including leap years.

Use the due status shown in Metra rather than recreating the calculation in a spreadsheet.

Maintain the lifecycle

The lifecycle is:

  • draft: being prepared and not active yet
  • active: contributes to the calibration schedule
  • suspended: temporarily paused without resetting the next due date
  • retired: no longer applicable and cannot be restored in normal workflow
  • archived: kept for history with no further transitions

Controlled updates and lifecycle actions create fixed revisions. Changing schedule fields does not silently recalculate existing approved due dates. If the due date must change, use Adjust due date and add a reason.

Expected result

The equipment now has a traceable calibration requirement with an approved scheduling baseline. It appears in Dashboard and work queues based on its calculated due status.

Permission caveats

Requirement actions use separate permissions. A visible record does not mean you can edit it.

If an action is unavailable, ask an owner or quality manager to verify your permissions and the equipment state.

Next steps

Author a calibration procedureAssign a procedure to calibration work