How to postpone a BRC audit due to lack of product availability?
Has anyone ever had any experience with a BRC certified co. that have looked to pospone their BRC audit due to lack of product availability.
Can you be given an extension for a limited period ( e.g until cert expires) until assessed such raw material becomes readily available ?
What obstacles do you need to overcome to make a justifiable circumstance approved by BRC provider ?
Do you need to submit a letter to apply for this deferral ?
And if approved by Certification body and postponed to February 19, I assume they would still audit befoe version 08 becomes valid for inspection
Thoughts please
I would just email BRC directly and copy your CB
IMEX CB's will try anything to pull a fast one when they know you've not got the time to investigate
https://www.brcgloba...ication-bodies/
enquiries@brcglobalstandards.com
I would suggest that you contact your certification body and explain the situation. They should be able to provide guidance to your question. In the end, you are their customer and they should try to help you.
From what I read in BRC version 7, section 2.7.2, you can postpone the audit in case you are producing seasonal products and the production is delayed by a late start to the season without getting a non-confirmity for point 1.1.8. But your certificate is only valid until the date written on the certificate. After the day of your audit, you still need to wait 42 days until your new certificate will be issued. By then your customers will find out that you don't have a valid certificate anymore. You can always explain them the situation, provide evidence of the reason for delay, a report of the audit non-conformities and hope that they will be reasonable and understand it.
If you are going to be audited after the 1st of February, it will be done against version 8. I just attended a workshop on BRC version 8 at which a fellow attende was saying that they have unannounced audit in the second part of January - first part of February. The BRC auditor that was also at the course said that if the auditor comes on the 31st of January, then it's version 7, on the 1st of February is already version 8.
Can I ask what kind of product are you producing?
Thanks for feedback . We produce Shellfish (Prawns).
Customers would not be requesting cert straight away .
Current cert is valid to 27th January 2019. Audit is due in December
Maybe I'm asking too much, but what is the reason for postponing the audit date? When you say product availability, I'm just thinking that there is a ban on fishing or your ownly grower had a problem and can't supply for 2 months.
A few years ago our certificate was issued a few days after the old one expired (theer was a problem at the certification body) and I've already emails from customers asking why our certificate was not reissued. So it depends on what your customer requires from you.
In another year the certification body had to postpone on the last moment the day of the audit because the auditor had an accident. As our audit was planned close to the due date for auditing, our audit got re-schedualed after the due-date because there was no auditor available to conduct the audit. As the delay was not from our fault, we didn't get a NC for it.
No ban , just a lack of availability !!!
We are a seasonal operation and as such, when i had my (SQF) recert audit this year, production was already complete........but because we still have labeling/warehousing regardless of time of year, the audit was still completed (but I did tell then what our production schedule was as it was an unannounced)
I cannot get the BRC standard to see exactly what the wording is in the preamble; but this should be covered in beginning of the standard