How We Test Our Ambulances for Safety and Quality

Testing an ambulance at KG Special Performance involves two processes running in parallel. The first takes place daily in our production hall as part of the ISO 9001 quality management system. The second is conducted outside our company by an independent, authorized technical service, which assesses the compliance of the finished vehicle with the EN 1789:2020+A1:2024 standard. No ambulance is delivered to a customer until both processes are closed with a complete set of documentation.

What Ambulance Testing Covers in Practice

An ambulance transports patients in a condition where every second and every centimeter matters. Stretchers must remain secured during sudden braking, a ventilator must work after several years of daily use on an icy road, and the oxygen installation cannot fail under the full load of the medical compartment. Therefore, an ambulance, unlike a standard delivery vehicle, is subject to a separate standard regulating its construction, equipment, and testing — EN 1789:2020+A1:2024.

In practice, a “tested ambulance” is a shorthand term covering several separate stages: ongoing quality control in production, one-time type testing conducted by an external entity, type approval issued on this basis, and repeatable audits confirming that every subsequent unit still matches the approved benchmark. Below we describe each of these stages separately — these concepts are sometimes used interchangeably in communication about ambulances, although they mean completely different things.

What the ISO 9001 Certificate Means for Quality Control in Production

ISO 9001 does not certify a single ambulance. It certifies the way the company produces — the repeatability of the process, the documentation of each stage, and the ability to trace which component went into which vehicle. For the buyer, this means something specific — two ambulances of the same type, produced a few months apart, should come out of the same documented procedure, regardless of which team actually carried out the assembly. In daily work, this means control at several stages of the conversion:

• before final assembly — compliance of cabinets, equipment mountings, and installations with the approved specification for a given vehicle configuration,
• after completing the conversion — operation of the electrical and oxygen installations, and stretcher mounting systems,
• after each inspection — an entry in the documentation that remains with the vehicle and later serves as a reference point during external conformity of production audits.

ISO 9001 is thus the foundation on which it is even possible to build reliable external certification. If the production process is not repeatable and documented, no certification body will confirm the conformity of an entire series of vehicles — it can, at most, assess a single unit.

What Tests Must an Ambulance Pass According to the EN 1789:2020+A1:2024 Standard?

The standard requires the finished ambulance to undergo strength tests of the conversion and mountings, dynamic tests simulating collisions from several directions, leakage tests, and an assessment of vehicle stability during dynamic driving, as well as meeting separate requirements regarding equipment and stretcher mounting systems. The specific parameters of these tests — for example, the magnitude of the dynamic load or the number of tested impact directions — are determined by the standard and vary depending on the equipment element and the methodology of the testing body. Therefore, we do not provide a single number here as a universal indicator: what counts is compliance with the full range of the standard’s requirements for a given type of ambulance. The scope of tests includes, among others:

• static strength of cabinets, handles, and other elements of the medical conversion,
• dynamic tests simulating a collision with the full load of the medical compartment,
• conversion leakage tests,
• assessment of vehicle stability during dynamic driving,
• compliance of equipment and stretcher mounting systems with the requirements of the standard.

These requirements apply equally to types A, B, and C. What differentiates these types — the level of medical equipment and the intended team staffing — does not affect the scope of testing itself.

Who Tests the Ambulance and Who Issues the Type Approval

The tests themselves and the conformity of production audit are conducted by an independent, notified technical service, combining the assessment of the vehicle type characteristics with the inspection of the production conditions at the manufacturer’s facility — in Poland, this includes the Łukasiewicz Research Network – Automotive Industry Institute (PIMOT). The decision to issue or maintain a vehicle type approval certificate, on the other hand, is made by a separate approval authority, in Poland the Director of Transportation Technical Supervision, based on the test and audit results provided by the technical service.

Role	Who performs it	What they specifically do
Type testing and production audit	Authorized technical service (e.g., Łukasiewicz-PIMOT)	Tests the unit for compliance with EN 1789:2020+A1:2024, assesses the manufacturer’s organizational and technical conditions
Issuance and maintenance of type approval	Approval authority (in Poland: Director of TDT)	Issues the type approval certificate based on test and audit results

This distinction has practical significance for the buyer — the question “who certified this ambulance” has two correct answers, depending on whether it is about the test itself or the formal authorization for road use.

Why Ambulance Certification Does Not End on the Delivery Date

This is because type approval covers an approved vehicle type, and each subsequently produced unit must be individually linked to this approval — that is why conformity of production (COP) control applies, a repeatable audit checking whether mass-produced ambulances still match what was approved during the initial type test. The COP is conducted by the same technical service that performed the initial test, based on the authorizations granted to it, and the results go to the approval authority — in Poland, to the Director of Transportation Technical Supervision — upon whom the continued validity of the type approval depends.

A manufacturer who has once obtained type approval and then ceased to maintain the previously described internal procedures exposes themselves to real consequences during the next audit. For us, this means that the internal quality control described above is the daily basis of the entire external certification system — the production documentation we wrote about earlier is precisely the material on which every subsequent audit is based.

The Ambulance Testing Process at KG Special Performance Step by Step

In practice, both processes — internal and external — combine into a single sequence before the ambulance reaches the customer, covering the entire range of the type A, B, and C ambulance offering on the Volkswagen Crafter and Mercedes-Benz Sprinter chassis:

1. The medical conversion is created according to the approved specification for a given type and configuration of the vehicle, with quality control at successive stages of assembly.
2. The finished vehicle (or a representative unit of a given configuration) undergoes a type test conducted by an authorized technical service, in the scope described above.
3. Based on the test results and the assessment of production conditions, a vehicle type approval certificate is issued.
4. Subsequent, mass-produced units are built under the same ISO 9001 quality system and are subject to periodic conformity of production audits, which maintain the validity of the type approval.

We document each of these four steps separately, so if necessary, we can trace the history of a specific vehicle right down to the first welded frame.

What Our Certificates Confirm: EN 1789:2020+A1:2024, ISO 9001, and EU Type Approval

In 2025, KG Special Performance obtained all three documents described in this article: the certificate of compliance with the EN 1789:2020+A1:2024 standard, the ISO 9001 quality management system certificate, and the EU vehicle type approval. Scans of the certificates are available on our website in the section dedicated to certificates.

Certificate	What it specifically confirms
EN 1789:2020+A1:2024	conformity of the construction, equipment, and tested parameters of the vehicle with the standard for road ambulances of a given type
ISO 9001	documented, repeatable quality management process in production
EU Type Approval	formal authorization of the approved vehicle type for road use within the EU

None of these documents alone replaces the others. Only together do they describe the full chain: what has been tested, how production quality is maintained, and who formally authorized the vehicle for road use. For the buyer, this means that you can ask to see each of them separately — you don’t have to just take our word for it.

How to Check Ambulance Documentation Before Purchasing

Ambulance documentation is only worth as much as can be realistically verified in it, not as much as the commercial offer itself declares. A few practical steps worth taking before signing a contract:

• Ask for a document with a specific standard designation — EN 1789:2020+A1:2024, not a vague “meets European standards”.
• Check if the actual configuration of the offered vehicle corresponds to the scope for which the type approval was issued — equipment changes beyond the approved scope may violate this conformity.
• Ask not only about the initial type approval, but also whether the manufacturer is subject to ongoing conformity of production control — a one-time type test from a few years ago is not enough.
• If the certificate was issued by the Łukasiewicz Research Network-PIMOT, its validity can be checked independently in the official certificate search engine run by this institution.
• Ask about the scope of post-purchase support — with us, this includes service available throughout the entire life cycle of the vehicle, not just the warranty period.

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