The Internal Audit - Make The Most Of It!

The Internal Audit - make the most of it!
By David Powley - DNV Certification

The internal (or first party) audit should be one of the most important opportunities for an organisation to check the effectiveness and the delivery capability of its management system. Unfortunately this opportunity is generally not appreciated according to David Powley, of DNV Certification, who offers an opinion on how to get better value from it.

The internal audit is a well established feature of all management system standards and protocols for quality, environment and safety & health (QESH). Certification bodies (or Registrars) take the internal audit seriously - they are required to. It is an obligatory feature for consideration at every certification or maintenance audit that they carry out on their certificated companies. Certification body auditors would prefer to ‘ride on the back' of the internal audit and assess how capably the organisation can discover its own non-conformities and improvement opportunities. This is the ideal situation but too many organisations unnecessarily restrict themselves and do not fully appreciate the freedom and imagination they can exercise.

The Internal Audit - make the most of it!

Regards,
Simon

There's a lot to say regarding Internal Auditing (Assessment).
The article by David Powley is excellent.

I'll start by saying this:
Internal Auditing has been the most neglected form of CI available to organizations who, wish to be pro-active regarding enabling internal systems to reflect their measured organizational wide policies of Quality, Safety, Environment and Health.

A lot has been said regarding the ISO standards that are available for companies and organizations. If you adopt this standard, you'll realize so much of your organizational capabilities, YEAH RIGHT!
I have a great regard for the ISO standards available yet, I believe many companies and organizations "Must Needs" take a step back and re-assess (Or re- audit) their respective organizational capabilities.
I guess it's like putting the cart before the horse as, many companies and organizations tend to, adopt an international management standard first and then, build their business system around the standard (The registrars love this approach).
I firmly believe that organizations should adopt an auditing system and format within their companies that would asess the actual need for CI initially and then, consider the adoption, infusion and integration of excellent models and benchmarks such as ISO 9001/9004.
The power of the internal audit out with the constraints of adopted ISO standards, is IMO FWIW, where we should start.
Attached is a visual I posted at a forum recently and, it did indeed engage positive feedback and agreement regarding a starting point.
It should be noted that Internal auditing is not owned by any particular standard. Internal auditing is not rocket science either and, it should be seen for what it actually is: It's a primary focus tool that can indeed allow an organization to see the big picture regarding system efficacy. I make no secret that, I endorse and subscribe to Allan J Sayle's process methods relating to "The Task Element Approach".
Wallace.

Hi Wallace, how you doing? Thanks for the visual.

I make no secret that, I endorse and subscribe to Allan J Sayle's process methods relating to "The Task Element Approach".
Wallace.

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I'm interested to find out more, can you suggest any online resources / articles where we can learn more about "The Task Element Approach"?

I don't know if you've read the article below from the web site:
Looking at Work Horizontally

Regards,
Simon

Simon,
I spoke with Allan Sayle during December 04 and, he did say he was going to be in touch with you regarding posting some articles at Saferpak.
Wallace.

Yes we exchanged emails and he promised to send some articles over. Allan also had a nice article published in the January 05 edition of Quality World called "Upwards and Onwards.' I just had a look at the IQA web site, it's on there, but you need to be a member to read it. So much for 'placing quality at the heart of every organisation' - IQA's motto.

I thought there might have been something of Allan's online already…I guess I'll just have to wait.

Regards,
Simon

Would you send me the article Simon?
Wallace.

Would you send me the article Simon?
Wallace.

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Sure, my scanners kanckered at the moment so I'll have to think of another way.

Simon

Would you send me the article Simon?
Wallace.

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As promised Allan's article attached. ‘Onwards and Upwards' was published in the January 2005 edition of Quality World the Institute of Quality Assurance (IQA) magazine. Quality World is a must read publication for all quality practitioners - so do yourself a favour and subscribe today!

Onwards_and_Upwards.pdf   718.39KB   124 downloads

Apolgies for the poor physical quality of the article it was photocopied and scanned before being converted to pdf.

Regards,
Simon

Atached is an overview of Allan J sayle's work relating to the task process elements and management audits, Enjoy.
IMO, when the task process elements are employed, you shall experience an exponential knowledge gain in relation to auditing and management of system.
Wallace

Atached is an overview of Allan J sayle's work relating to the task process elements and management audits, Enjoy.

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Hey Wallace, nothing attached - what's the file type / size?

Regards,
Simon

Atached is an overview of Allan J sayle's work relating to the task process elements and management audits, Enjoy.

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Hey Wallace, nothing attached - what's the file type / size?

Regards,
Simon

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Sorry Simon,
I had a crash while attempting to attach the visuals.
hopefully the attached zip files will be ok to read.
The attached visuals give a really good overview of Allan J Sayle's approach to process auditing and system thinking.
Wallace.

Thanks for the docs Wallace. As soon as Allan sends me something I'll get it published on the web site - I'll let you know.

Regards,
Simon

Simon,

I can't seem to access these files

Attached are the visuals in PDF format.
Wallace.

They are zip files - you need WinZip to extract the files. The programme used to be free but it appears to be on trial to buy now.

Winzip download page

If you don't want to download the programme I can extract and reattach the files for you.

Regards,
Simon

Attached are the visuals in PDF format.
Wallace.

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I didn't see your post Wallace, thanks for attaching the files as pdf's.

Regards,
Simon

Thanks for these.