ORBCOMM’s US ELD Certifier Achieves Accreditation

There has been a big step forward this week for the third-party certification process that is needed to support the Canadian ELD mandate coming in January 2023.

Transport Canada has announced that FPInnovations, a Canadian research centre, has been accredited as the first third-party organization to certify electronic logging devices.  FPInnovations’ PIT Group already has an active program that tests ELDs in the United States focused on the U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) requirements.

ORBCOMM is no stranger to third-party ELD testing or to the FPInnovations (PIT Group). In July 2019, ORBCOMM became part of an elite group of ELD providers in the United States when its fleet management solution received third-party ELD certification. The solution was independently verified by FPInnovations (PIT Group) to be fully compliant with the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) Mandate issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). This required passing 314 technical points of thorough, unbiased testing by the PIT Group.

ORBCOMM is currently preparing our Canadian ELD product for certification and we anticipate it will be ready well before the 2023 deadline. Our ELD for the United States is already available in a French-Canadian language version and North American cross-border carrier customers are leveraging it to help fleets with their French-speaking drivers.

According to Transport Canada’s recently amended Commercial Vehicle Hours of Service Regulation, ELDs for use in Canada must be verified and certified by an accredited third-party Certification Body as compliant with the Technical Standard for Electronic Logging Devices. To qualify as an accredited Certification Body, FPInnovations has demonstrated compliance with the International Organization for Standardization standard ISO/ICE 17065, its expertise in testing ELDs and the validity of the results of that methodology. FPInnovations will launch its ELD certification program this fall.

FPInnovations employs more than 430 people. With R&D laboratories located in Montréal, Quebec City, and Vancouver, it has technology transfer offices across Canada.

For more information about Canadian ELD, contact us at eld@orbcomm.com.

Scott Stofer

Scott Stofer is Director of Product Management at ORBCOMM, where he’s responsible for the product lifecycle of fleet safety solutions, as well as ELD mandate and Hours of Service compliance for the US and Canada. Scott has over 10 years of IoT and telematics experience, including web and mobile software development, as well as the design and deployment of wireless networks for NASCAR to collect racing data. He currently resides in Salt Lake City, Utah.