Internal Audit - Corporate

Hi

There is a lot of information on internal audits and determining the frequency by performing a risk assessment.  I haven't been able to find a discussion around the topic of having a corporate entity perform an internal audit for one of their plants.  We have a corporate QA team that comes out for 3 days to our facility and conducts an audit that is based on the BRC standard.  For the areas that are under an annual review, could this be considered our internal audit?  We would then have a plant based internal audit team that is reviewing the areas that require more frequency (i.e. quarterly).  I appreciate the input!

from the BRC guidance notes: 

'...The site must therefore have a schedule or programme of internal audits to ensure that individual sections of the process, documentation or production are scheduled for different, predefined audit dates throughout the year.

A once-a-year check against all the BRC Standard requirements may be of value as a gap analysis when preparing for an audit, but is insufficient to cover the full requirements of an internal audit programme as it will not provide the depth of assessment or level of confidence required...''

and

'...The use of an external consultant (e.g. by small sites) is acceptable, providing the internal audit programme is scheduled throughout the year and not in a single block of activity...'

Corporate QA team could be interpreted as 'an external consultant'.