01 · questionnaire — Before the proposal
on screen: statement
You ask us for a proposal, and the first thing you get back is a questionnaire. What you write on it decides how long your audit takes, who arrives, and what your certificate is able to say. We cannot price the work before those answers are in.
02 · four-answers — What we ask · Four answers size the audit
on screen: cards
Four answers do most of the work. Which standards you want us to audit, because each one has its own requirements to sample. How many people do the work, counted across every shift. Which sites, and what actually happens at each. And which of your processes you are asking us to certify.
03 · headcount — Headcount · Who counts as your people
on screen: strike
Headcount is where the answer is most often wrong. Night and weekend shifts get left out. So do part time and seasonal staff. So do the contractors working under your own supervision. Count everyone whose work sits inside the scope you want certified, on every shift that runs it.
04 · sites — Sites · Sites you declare, sites we certify
on screen: panels
Sites work the same way. Tell us every location where the work in scope is done, and what happens at each one. Tell us which shifts each site runs. We then plan a visit against that list. Your certificate can only cover sites the audit sampled. The register shows those sites to anyone who looks. A site nobody audited stays off it.
05 · route — The route · The route from the form to the register
on screen: track
There is a route from that form to the register, and it runs in one direction. The questionnaire sets the duration. The proposal follows from it. Everything after that is planned against what you declared.
06 · plan — Before we arrive · The audit plan, issued in advance
on screen: list
Once the duration is set, we issue an audit plan, and you get it before we travel. It names the dates. It mentions the audit team. It covers which sites and which shifts we will visit. It sets out the processes we will look at on each day. And it tells you which of your people we need available.
07 · duration — Audit duration · What moves the audit time
on screen: rows
Three of the answers move the audit time, and they all move it the same way. More people in scope means more of the work to sample. More sites means more work that has to be seen where it happens. A wider set of processes takes a longer sample. None of it moves the outcome. The duration is derived before the audit is planned, and the decision is taken afterwards by a reviewer who was not there.
08 · left-off — What goes wrong · What happens when a site is left off
on screen: compare
The error we have to plan around is an omission. A site is left off the form, or a shift is, and it surfaces at stage one when we read your documents against your declaration. The plan is then replanned and the duration recalculated. Your certificate cannot list a site nobody audited. A buyer who checks the register sees the sites that are on it.
09 · our-scope — One answer can end it
on screen: statement
One answer on that form can end the conversation. Our accredited scope is four standards: I S O nine thousand and one, I S O fourteen thousand and one, I S O forty five thousand and one, and I S O twenty two thousand, three hundred and one.
10 · certificate — What it becomes · What your answers end up saying
on screen: panels
Everything you declared ends up in public. The standards we audited, with the edition. The scope, word for word. Every site the audit covered. The dates it runs between. Our register carries the same entry, searchable by certificate number or by organization. It shows the same sites and the same scope. And it shows the status as it stands today.
11 · cycle — Three years · Your answers get read again every year
on screen: cycle-track
Your certificate runs for three years, with a surveillance audit in each of the two years after it and recertification at the end. The answers you gave us are read again at each of those audits. If your headcount has grown, or you have opened a site, the audit time is derived again. Tell us when it changes, and the plan follows the organization you actually are.
12 · close
on screen: statement
The audit you get is the one your own answers described. Read the questionnaire as carefully as you read the certificate, because one produces the other. If anything on it has changed since you sent it, tell us before the plan is issued.