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BRC Audit - Not a Certification audit

Started by , Feb 27 2019 12:49 AM
9 Replies

Hello,

 

I was contacted by our Certification body this evening that BRC will be conducting a compliance audit on Monday.   This will be done through BRC representatives, not by our CB.   Has anyone been through such an audit?

 

The standard states:   BRC Global Standards reserves the right to conduct its own audit or visit to a site once certificated in response to complaints or as part of routine compliance activity to ensure the integrity of the scheme.  Such visits may be announced or unannounced.

 

Hoping someone can tell me a little more about this such audit.   Duration, scope?  

 

Thank you

 

Michael

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Similar to Internal Affairs in that they may be following up on errors by an auditor for instance or may have received complaints that your company is out of compliance with the standards and they need to find out now.

Contact your CB and inform them of the contact to ensure it is legit and demand prior identification from whoever is coming.
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Similar to Internal Affairs in that they may be following up on errors by an auditor for instance or may have received complaints that your company is out of compliance with the standards and they need to find out now.

Contact your CB and inform them of the contact to ensure it is legit and demand prior identification from whoever is coming.

 

 

It wouldn't surprise me that BRC conduct these follow ups.

 

We just heard a rumour, and I'm wondering if maybe you could clear up if this could be a true scenario; an auditor has been, allegedly, suspended for life from performing further BRC audits. This after BRC discovered wrongful performed audits.

Could this be true?

The auditor must have done several, severe misconducts, if this is true.

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Similar to Internal Affairs in that they may be following up on errors by an auditor for instance or may have received complaints that your company is out of compliance with the standards and they need to find out now.

Contact your CB and inform them of the contact to ensure it is legit and demand prior identification from whoever is coming.

 

That is how I interpreted it as well.   The strange thing is we were notified by our CB about this audit, not by BRC.   I don't know anyone else who has gone through this type of audit.

 

Still waiting to hear details.  Since this is at our other facility, I cannot make travel arrangements until I know the duration of the audit.

Our auditor tells us at the end of every audit that this can happen. The BRC do random follow ups to make sure auditors are adhering to certain standards. They are auditing the auditor not your site. My understanding is that they will conduct the audit as the auditor did using the same documents to see if they come to the same conclusions. The auditor may not have done anything wrong for this check to happen, it is more an auditor calibration check  :spoton:

I actually wish there were more of these  (not that anyone wants more audits) but I do feel (at least in my experience) that the auditors AND the CB's need more oversight.............some places are getting through audits like a breeze and others are being demanded things that are not expressly stated in the code

 

My last audit was a training audit so I had a technical manager here too, which I actually liked because it allowed me to ask for clarification and not interrupted the actual audit

Our auditor tells us at the end of every audit that this can happen. The BRC do random follow ups to make sure auditors are adhering to certain standards. They are auditing the auditor not your site. My understanding is that they will conduct the audit as the auditor did using the same documents to see if they come to the same conclusions. The auditor may not have done anything wrong for this check to happen, it is more an auditor calibration check  :spoton:

 

So we should plan on this being the same duration as our certification audit?

 

My confusion comes from the "auditing the auditor" standpoint.   They would still be auditing our site, our documents, policies, procedures, to ensure accuracy with the previous auditor, no?      To add to the confusion, we were audited to v7 last year and this year will be v8.   

BRC might have received several reports regarding the Auditor or the CB itself, 

IMO: i would suggest you to be over-prepared as they might see your FS systems more microscopically, 

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BRCGS has a very well developed compliance program - certainly the most robust of any of the GFSI benchmarked standards. The website has a pretty good overview, and the annual BRCGS compliance report is always well received by the industry.

 

Compliance has a number of inputs: ranging from site or specifier complaints, to random selection. Primarily, it is driven by analysis of activity on the BRCGS Directory - assessing audit data by category, region, CB, auditor and so on. Anomalies in data - say one auditor who always gives the same non-conformities, or a region with excessive audit duration, triggers a question, and often times the compliance team works with the certification body first, to understand if there is a specific reason - say an auditor who works only in a very narrow category would likely have similar non-conformities in many audits.

It has a number of different outputs, everything from desk audit reviews of reports, to utilization of the BRCGS Directory to identify trends in regions, CB's, auditors and categories.

 

Yes, the outcome may well be a site receives a visit from one of the BRCGS compliance auditors. In general, they are only a single day in length, targeting either a specific question, or coming in to assess if the grade awarded during the audit fits the general situation. They generally provide the CB the opportunity to shadow, as a learning opportunity, but not always.

 

Essentially, no one is a big fan of it happening, but when taken in context of the outcome - the strength of the BRCGS program, and it's reputation, people generally realize that being part of the program means supporting the quality systems that made it that way.

Well, it turns out the auditor was sick and had to cancel.   Thanks for everyone's feedback, and if they choose to return I will provide an update.

 

Mike


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