Generally speaking, all audits can fall into one of the following four categories:
First Party or Internal Audits: To identify improvement opportunities within an organisation, to act upon for the purpose of facilitating continual improvement.
Second Party Audits: To verify that an interested party (eg. a supplier) is working in accordance with the contract arrangements to provide the specified products or services, and that they will be providing the product or service as specified in the contract.
Third Party Audits: To achieve certification to the requirements of a specified standard. These audits are conducted by independent external (accredited) Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs) and a certificate of conformity is provided.
Compliance audits: To verify an organisation’s level of compliance to legal, regulatory or other industry requirements.
Different types of audits serve different purposes, and therefore are conducted in different ways. Sometimes a compliance approach is taken, with 100% checking that requirements have been met. Sometimes a sampling methodology is adopted in order to enable the auditor to cover a wider scope (such as for a full business management system).
Audits are usually conducted against one or more of the following types of criteria:
An organisation’s own defined processes and procedures
- A Management Standard, or multiple Management Standards
Codes of Practice
Regulations
- Legislation
- Industry Standards
- Contracts
- Client Standards or other requirements
Our clients often ask us to conduct their Audits for them on a regular basis, for a number of reasons:
- We’re a “fresh set of eyes” providing valuable feedback for continual improvement;
- Often things can be missed or overlooked when audits are conducted by people who are too familiar with the business and its processes;
- Sometimes people aren’t comfortable raising issues when it relates to work undertaken by their colleagues, who they need to work with every day;
- They don’t have a competent auditor within their business to conduct the audits;
- Scheduled audits are consistently falling behind schedule; and/or
- They would just rather focus on running the business.
- We can manage and effectively implement your organisation’s ongoing audit schedule.
The main types of Auditing Services ISO Certification Experts provides are:
First Party or Internal Audits
These could be for the purpose of general continuous improvement, against your organisation’s defined requirements. They could also be part of your ongoing management system implementation requirements for your certification to one or more management system standards.
We can conduct these on an ad hoc basis, or on a regular schedule (for example, monthly or quarterly).
Second Party Audits
These could be to verify that an interested party (for example, a subcontractor) is working in accordance with the contract arrangements to provide the specified services.
We can conduct these for the duration of a contact, on an ad hoc basis, or on a regular schedule (for example, monthly or quarterly).
Compliance Audits
We can conduct your site safety and environmental inspections, ensuring your organisation is meeting “best practice” and compliance requirements for your type of workplace.
We can also conduct compliance audits against Codes of Practice, Regulations, Legislation, your Industry requirements and/or your Client requirements.
These can be project-specific audits or for certain areas of your organisation, and on an ad hoc or regular schedule.
The Main Standards We Work With
We work with all core Standards across all industries and sizes of organisations, so we tailor our services to suit your business requirements and resourcing needs.
QUALITY
SAFETY
Management Systems
Management Systems
Management Systems
& Safety Management Systems
(Editions 5 & 6)
ENVIRONMENTAL
Systems
Systems
Management System Guidelines
(Edition 3)
How We Can Help
Your personal Consultant gets to know you, your business, and what you need to achieve out of your systems and what type of audits you need.
We take care of the whole process for you, answer all your questions and adjust our services to suit your resources and your individual business needs. We’ll be there for you to coach you through the preparation, through the audits and ongoing.
If you need, we help you to select your Conformity Assessment Body Auditor and ensure they have the appropriate knowledge of your industry and the work you do, are realistic and take a value-adding approach.
We understand that every business is unique – we want this to be a meaningful and value-adding process for you.
