BRC blended audits - BRCGS080

Hi All,

Not seen this posted up here yet so just sharing in case it's useful for anyone who hasn't seen it - BRC has published a new position statement and procedure for what they term a "blended" audit. Roughly this is a combined remote/physical audit intended to be used in place of what would normally be the full site audit, so for example if your BRC is normally two days, you could now do a 1-day remote audit for the systems review elements, and a 1-day physical audit for the site elements, the theory being that this will be helpful in the current circumstances, whilst still allowing sites to renew their "full" certification rather than the 6-month extensions that many of us now have. The site audit needs to be conducted within 1 month of the remote audit part, so it's really only viable if your facility has lifted at least some of the visitor restrictions.
Currently available for Food, Agents & Brokers, Storage & Distribution, and Packaging standards, and only for those sites that are already certified - it can't be used for first-time certification.

Overview and full details on the BRCGS site: https://www.brcgs.co...ting-using-ict/

Thanks for sharing pHruit, and interesting. SALSA are now doing a similar thing; they've split their audit into 3 stages - self-assessment, remote audit, and site audit - so they only need to be on site for half a day or so to do the 'factory tour' type requirements which can't be done remotely.

I have no skin in the game (not BRC). I guess the question I would have is: If my company has restricted all access to people like auditors/inspectors/truck drivers (any persons that travel extensively as their job description), how does allowing them in for just 1 day as opposed to 2 make the risk level acceptable?

I understand that each facility is different, and each area has different levels of restrictions. I just feel like it's a bit of Security Theater to subtract a day from the onsite audit, but still come onsite to do the audit.

I guess I'm trying to figure out how that minimizes the risk to an acceptable level for those that still have any restrictions in place.

I am not trying to debate it, just wrap my head around how I'd sell it to corporate if I run into similar.

I have no skin in the game (not BRC). I guess the question I would have is: If my company has restricted all access to people like auditors/inspectors/truck drivers (any persons that travel extensively as their job description), how does allowing them in for just 1 day as opposed to 2 make the risk level acceptable?

I agree it certainly doesn't negate it completely, and thus we still won't be starting the process until the our own restrictions on non-essential visitors are lifted. But it can help manage risk for both the auditors/certification body and for the food business.

For example we're scheduling necessary maintenance etc to fit into the downtime between shifts, and to some extent can tailor the production program to run smaller shifts at times - doing the latter to coincide with the physical audit day would at least allow us to minimise the total number of people on site, and thus make the "social distancing" controls easier to manage via reduced density in the production and warehouse areas. Achieving that for a single day is much easier than doing it for three consecutive days.

For the auditors it means fewer potential stays in hotels, less travel etc and thus less general exposure. One of our sites is in an area of the country where much of the economy relies on tourism, and there has been a massive surge in visitor numbers in recent weeks. I certainly wouldn't want to travel there to have to stay in a crammed hotel if I could avoid it, so a single day's visit seems like an ideal solution.