The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the UK's national measurement institute. For more than a century NPL has developed and maintained the UKs primary measurement standards. These standards underpin an infrastructure of traceability throughout the UK and the world that ensures accuracy and consistency of measurement.

NPL employs over 500 scientists, based in South West London.

www.npl.co.uk

Contact: Jiyu Wu

The CZECH METROLOGY INSTITUTE is a national metrological body, whose most important targets are:

• to ensure primary and national standards of units and scales of physical and technical quantities
• to maintain, improve and internationally compare the national and primary standards
• to assure traceability to standards of lower orders
• to accomplish research and development in the field of national metrology (especially by realization of new standards and measuring instruments)
• to administer the acquisition and preparation of reference materials and their certification
• to participate in international co-operation in the field of scientific and legal metrology

With respect to metrological legislation, activities of the CMI can be generally divided into three areas:

• fundamental (primary) metrology
• non-regulated area of metrology (calibration of measuring instruments). CMI operates some secondary metrological labs (usually on the highest secondary level) even in the field which is normally a domain of private labs. This activity within CMI is considered to be a normal metrological service carried out in competition with other private labs
• regulated area, legal metrology (type approvals of legal measuring instruments, first and subsequent verification of measuring instruments, inspection)

www.cmi.cz

LNE (Laboratoire National de Métrologie et d'Essais) is a state-owned company attached to the French Ministry of Industry.

LNE's public service missions are:

1. operate as the national reference laboratory in metrology
2. pursue its scientific and technological development in order to anticipate new measurement and testing requirements in the fields of energy, safety, health, quality and environmental protection
3. provide state authorities and key economic players with the technical assistance they require to draft new regulations and standards at national, European and International level.

As a National Metrology Institute (NMI), LNE has been developing for many years high accuracy facilities for measuring the main thermophysical properties of materials, such as thermal transport properties, caloric quantities and radiative properties in large temperature ranges.

www.lne.fr

The main activity of the Hungarian Trade Licensing Office (Office) is to implement authoritative-administrative tasks in field of state administration of foreign trade, surveillance of production and service in armament industry, certain tasks in trade, market-surveillance, surveillance of public warehouses, assaying and hallmarking of precious metals and metrology and technical safety.

The Office does metrological tasks, maintains the National Standards, and makes their international comparisons and assures the national dissemination with calibrating the measuring instruments. It provides the type-examination and authentication of those measurement instruments which have to be authenticated and issues the EU compliance certification.

www.mkeh.gov.hu

The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is the German national metrology institute. PTB performs fundamental research and development work in the field of metrology in the areas concerning the determination of fundamental and natural constants, the realisation, maintenance and dissemination of the legal units of the SI, safety engineering, services and metrology for the area regulated by law and for industry, as well as technology transfer.

www.ptb.de