Re certification audit - Is it tough than survillence audit

Extremely tough and many fail. Horrendous and laden with pitfalls for quite a few. :eek:

In all honesty....it's like any other assessment, so don't sweat it.

Re certification audit - Is it tough than survillence audit
I agree with Randy; the only reason to worry is if you're not prepared. If you survived previous audits and you've maintained the system in the interim, you should be fine.

Extremely tough and many fail. Horrendous and laden with pitfalls for quite a few. http://elsmar.com/Forums/images/smilies/eek.gif In all honesty....it's like any other assessment, so don't sweat it.

Randy is completely right. My first certification audit I spent weeks before hand worrying and fretting. Day of the audit the whole thing went smoothly, the auditor was a great bloke who (without going into consultancy!) guided the whole thing with a great deal of compassion and humanity, put everybody at their ease and made the whole thing an unexpected pleasure. When it had finished, I wondered what all the worry was about.

The best piece of advice I think that I have every been given about assessments (given to me by a financial auditor) is prepare. If you are not prepared it will be painful; if you have prepared you should have no problem

With one company, I think the auditor asked more questions during the certification audit, simply because he wanted to understand the system. He always followed the registrar's own set of guidelines for the audits, regardless if it was a certification audit or a surveillance audit. He was always very fair in his assessments. He knew that I knew when there was a problem. We were almost always in agreement if something was an observation or a finding.

I recall once having a substitute auditor for one surveillance where calibration was an item to be audited. Now this guy was tough; and I thought he asked for things in calibration far beyond the standard's and our written system's requirements. I talked with operations at the registrar; they reviewed the audit results and agreed with me. Never had that auditor again.

If you know the system at your company, and how the processes interact with each other, you will do just fine.

It’s not precisely the same. This audit is going to take more time and specially it’s going to be more expensive. On the other hand you’ll get a brand new certificate.
The auditor has to check not only the results of internal audits, the results of management reviews, the treatment you gave to eventual customer complaints, you made since last visit and how you solved non conformance from previous audits, but this time he is going to check all your QMS.
So it’s going to be similar to your first audit. The main difference is that your organization is now much more used to be audited than it was 3 years ago...
;)