BRC Audit plan before the scheduled audit

Hi!

When you should get audit plan for scheduled audit? We will have our first audit and we got our schedule less than 5 days before. Every extra day for the first audit would have helped a lot. As auditor follows the plan, you would have more time to prepare for  questions...

I think audit plans are nice, however you should already know what questions the auditor will be asking by simply being fully prepared fir the audit.

I am assuming you already ran an outside (or internal) sourced gap analysis after implementation period or on going each year about 30-60 days prior to the audit window.

That would prepare you very well and then you'd see the audit plan as just another schedule. 

Hi,

Thanks, I know that you should be fully prepared, but when you have your first audit after 4 months of BRC performance, it is very big advantage to have audit  plan enough beforehand!!! Auditor follows the plan and we have not been ready for all questions as we got the plan so late -So my question was -is there any rules for time when you should get the plan ????

I believe when you receive the audit plan or schedule depends on the certification body you are using. In my experience, we only received the audit plan/schedule 2-4 days prior to the audit date, except for the unannounced audit, of course.

Thinking like an auditor, sending an audit schedule too early in advance means that the facility has much time to fabricate records or focus on certain areas the schedule outlines instead of always being prepared, which is the intention of the audit standard.

Having been an Auditor and on the tail end of my time as an Auditor was when outlines were sent out . Normally you would have one 1 week prior (5 business days) prior to the audit. 

We just had an unannounced audit at one of our sites and did not receive the audit plan ahead of time. I reached out to ask about this because we had at all of our previous unannounced audits. I was told the do not need to provide an audit plan ahead of time, they can do so at the beginning of the audit.

I've also found that on most occasions the auditor (and we've dealt with MANY different auditors) very rarely sticks to the plan anyway. This can happen for many reasons such as things are going either better or worse than expected, certain people have a conflict at the "scheduled" time so that section is revisited at another time, or the information in a section was discusses as part of another section so the need to revisit it isn't necessary.

The only thing we've really used the plan for is to schedule when lunch should be brought in and to try to have the various people available when their area is being covered.