BRC Unannounced Audit Time
Hi all,
Could you please share your experiences on the unannounced BRC audit time? Is it likely to happen in 1st month, 2nd month or 3rd?
We are a food production facility-Low risk.
Also if you have an unannounced emergency to do list (during the 30 min), could you please share it here?
Thanks very much,
EC
my experience with unannounced audits is that they more often than not they happen around your normal audit time. However, Iv'e also had them the first week of the window and the last. You just don't know and trying to predict will just drive you crazy.
In one of my previous companies the auditor told us that they try to have the audit as close to the "normal" audit window as possible, to avoid interfering too much with the "normal" dates.
But I'm not sure how accurate this is - the audit window we had then was from end of April to end of May, so the unnanounced window was end of November to end of May, and the unnanounced audit was in mid of March...
It used to be the case that auditors would avoid the last month, with the audit then undertaken sometime on the 4 months previous to the last month. This was the case when it was a 9 month window.
The unannounced window has now changed to 4 months for all schemes, and the audit can happen any time during those 4 months other than on days which the company have provided valid reasons to black out (up to 10) or on days where production does not happen (bank holidays, weekend, any declared non-production days). Certification bodies do not have a typical pattern that is followed, so any attempt to predict would be futile.
There is also some misunderstanding regarding what is being described as the 30 minute rule. Auditors are required to enter the production area as quickly as possible, with 30 minutes being the hard limit and not a target. In most cases I expect auditors to be in production within 15 to 20 minutes.
In addition to the above, it basically comes down to when an auditor has the time in their schedule.
Most auditors I know generally are almost fully booked a year out.
Marshall
I will echo all of the above. Some things we have seen, though of course they may mean nothing...
We had a site with a 2 week block, auditor showed up on the Monday after the block ended.
We have two sites near each other which are always audited in the same week. Auditor showed up on Thur. to one of them and no one was surprised when she showed up on Mon. to the other one.
I'm sure they try to book them so as to create as much efficiency and as little disruption for them as possible.
Good luck. Our sites have found that it is not nearly as painful as any of them were expecting!
Just to share my experience: I went into each day of our unannounced window like it was going to be audit day. However, by 8:30am, I relaxed a bit because I figured if they were showing up they would have been there early. Our auditor showed up in month 3 of our 4 month window at 8:45, so you really and truly don't know. Do your best to be prepared at all times, that's the spirit of the unannounced part anyway, even if it MASSIVELY inconvenient.
it could be any time really. if you have contacts at other food sites in your area it might be worth keeping in touch so you will know when an auditor is working your area.
Mine was within 2 weeks of the usual time. To add some flavor though, she said she was glad that it was an unannounced audit as she had planned to come the prior week, but a family situation caused her to change her plans (a flexibility she otherwise would not have had).
The auditor stated that all of her unannounced audits are roughly when the regular ones would be as she works them in with her existing annual schedule for our relatively remote region.
I've only had one unannounced and got an AA+ (which floored me for all the stress that lead up to it).
SQF unannounced audit window is still 8 weeks/2 months. So not all schemes are 4 months. You can also kind of figure out when they won't be coming a particular week. Say your audit is 2 days and then the auditor has 1 day off site to finalize, generally if they don't show up by Wednesday/Thursday morning, they won't be in that week. This is also assuming you are not a 7 day a week operation.