Readiness for surveillance and recertification audits

What we take on between now and the audit

• First-time certification

  Where there is no certificate yet, we build the system from nothing: set the scope, prepare the documentation, put the practice in place on site, and produce the records that have to exist before the first audit.

• Recertification readiness

  At the end of the three-year cycle the system is audited from the beginning again. We review the cycle’s records, any findings still open and the changed scope before the audit.

• Surveillance audit readiness

  A surveillance audit asks whether the system has kept running since the last one. We check that the records in between are continuous.

• System documentation

  We build or update the policy, procedure, instruction and form set around how the organization actually works. A document nobody uses is a finding waiting to happen.

• Internal audit

  We run the audit programme, the checklist and the reporting in the form the standard asks for. Each finding is written so that the evidence, the date and the owner are named.

• Management review

  We record the review’s inputs, decisions and resource requests against the topics the standard enumerates, rather than as meeting minutes.

• Closing findings

  We take the major and minor nonconformities left from the previous audit down to a root cause, and prepare the corrective action with the evidence of effectiveness the certification body will want to see.

• Staff awareness training

  The auditor questions people on the floor. We run short sessions so the team can describe its own process, the policy and what to do in an emergency.