1 reply to this topic

[zeynab]

Hello everyone,

 

We have an upcoming GMP+ unannounced audit. The auditor has requested to recieve black-out days as he has noticed that this has not yet been delivered by our company to the certification body, which is great that the auditor still gives us the chance to deliver this. The normal time-frame of this audit would normally be somewhere starting march 2020 and august 2020. In september 2020 we have a recertification audit planned for FSSC22000 transition to version 5.0. 

 

My question is the following:

 

How do you deal with calamities and the postponing of work that is to be performed by third parties? These are both not te be predicted beforehand and so cannot be mentioned as balckout periods. Does the auditor accept blackout periods to be communicated later on? Especially now with the COVID-19 crisis there is a lot of uncertainty for our company with regards to staff (small company) as well as work that needs to be delivered by third-party. 

 

I would love to hear your experiences and advice on this!

 

[pHruit]

I'd treat the blackout days as ways to book specific time you know isn't suitable - for example, so that they don't turn up at the same time as other audits are happening.

It's impossible to plan for the unknowns, and with the current situation there is more recognition of that than is usually the case.

Certainly the position statement from FSSC (https://www.fssc2200...id-19-pandemic/) suggests that they are aware of the situation and providing extension periods of 6 months.

For the GMP+ audit it looks like they've adopted a similar approach: https://www.gmpplus....gmpplus-audits/

Nonetheless it's probably worth contacting your certification bodies to discuss their approach.

 

There is a new section of the forum for Coronavirus-related discussions that you may find useful for general reading: https://www.ifsqn.co...and-discussion/

Particularly with regard to certification audits, these topics may be useful:

https://www.ifsqn.co...ncelled-audits/

https://www.ifsqn.co...-remote-audits/