How long to get BRC Agents & Brokers Certification from scratch?
Hello All,
Could any one suggest how long it takes to prepare for BRC Agents and Brokers. We have to start from scratch.
THx
Also interested in looking into Agents and Brokers. Eagerly watching this thread...
Most BRC Standards require about 3 months of history to audit otherwise it is not really possibe for the auditor to be confident that the systems are established and effective.
Although it is section 4 of the Standard, the major part of a Broker's business is how it manages it's suppliers. Therefore, this is where I would start. How do you approve your suppliers, have you got detailed specs, what are their traceability systems etc. Also this aspect is not under your direct control and suppliers can be very slow in providing information to you.
At the same time, I would begin looking at hazard analysis.
Much of the Standard is fairly typical of Quality Management Systems and depending upon what you already have it should not be too difficult to design or develop a system which works for your business
Hi Saenath,
It may depend on what you mean by "scratch".
If no technical background is available, I fear 6 months may be optimistic.
Or get a Consultant.
Hi,
We took 8 months. However, our factory was already BRC A grade (last 8 years) and we had a long experience of quality systems. Some of the suppliers are the same for factory and A&B, so we already had an acceptable supplier approval process.
Where we made our mistakes was in Section 2 - hazard analysis. This is not HACCP as it is unlikely that you will find CCPs. Unless you have a warehouse, all the parts of the process will be out of your control, so you need to rely on your supplier (raw materials, logistics, transport etc.) approval procedure to cover all bases. Like us, you'll probably miss something here however hard you try (we probably invested 40 experienced person days here).
The standard is quite vague and the interpretation guide was/is only available to the auditors, so be very careful. However, it is also quite limited, so there's not a huge amount to do!
Good luck.