Last week saw our annual ISO audit upon us once again, which seems to have come round so fast. With Covid-19 social distancing in place, Liz Rix, our Auditor, joined us via Zoom at various points throughout the day, to ask us questions and clarify the evidence we provided to her the previous day.

Having booked a date for the audit, Liz sent us a couple of documents to help us prepare.

  • List of questions and points that need to be covered in the Audit, with room for notes.
  • Plan of how the Audit day would go and which areas would be covered at each stage.

These documents are invaluable when preparing evidence, as it can be a daunting task trying to decide what to pull out of files and folders to support each area. It can prove to be a long and challenging process. Whilst it may appear a simple decision, (which it is for some areas), others cover many points and we must be able to justify this if asked. I met with Malcolm, our Operations Director on several virtual and face to face occasions in the 3 weeks leading up to the Audit, to discuss and agree on this matter alone.

I am a great list and note maker and scribbled all over several copies of the ISO points, to get my head around it and how we will clearly demonstrate that we have met the criteria. My biggest task was working out how to present things so that both us and Liz could find things when required.

I found it easiest to create a contents page (similar to a physical folder), splitting up areas of the business into sections. Then I added relevant evidence documents to each section, with their document control register numbers (eg. AU0001 for an Audit document). Finally. I mark beside each document the ISO Audit points it evidences.

So it began to look something like this…..

POLICIESDOC NOISO POINT
Customer Care PolicyPO00011,2,etc
Health, Safety & Welfare PolicyPO0002      3

 

Doc No.                            ISO point

Policies

Customer Care Policy                   PO0001                             1,2, etc

Health, Safety & Welfare Policy  PO0002

 

You get the idea!

As the day arrived, we nervously waited for the 10am Zoom meeting to open, and sure enough Liz popped up to greet us with her usual smile and welcome. It was a relatively brief first meeting, with Liz confirming how the day would go and what she needed to obtain via virtual walkabout of the site, or photographs. As we had sent all the evidence and contents list over the day before by WeTransfer, she had already reviewed some evidence, which was great as it meant the day was not so intense.

After a break while Liz checked more evidence, she came back with some questions and inevitably the odd correction that was needed (mainly to document numbers that differed). As we had a been so diligent with our evidence filing, I was able to correct and resend any corrections immediately via email.

All in all, the day went very smoothly and Liz was happy with our evidence, particularly our systems and how we control our documents. At the end of the final meeting, everyone was happy with how it had gone and that we had covered everything.

So we waited for a copy of the report and confirmation we had passed both the ISO 9001 and 14001 Audits successfully. It was great to see the report in black and white, confirming our pass the next day.

Thank you Liz Rix – Quality Management Systems Consultant  – https://www.rixmanagementsystems.co.uk/

HAPPY DAYS at CW Logistics ?