Hi.

I need help to audit a company (our associate), a quantity surveying firm, in their preparation for ISO 9001 certification.

The works involve pre-contract (feasibiity study estimates, cost plans,etc), post-contract (value management, value engineering,etc) and project management (programme management, resource management, project reviews,etc).

Please help with audit trailing (process approach), or maybe a check list will do. I can only help with clause 4 and clause 6

Any help is highly appreciated.

Thanks,
Lim.

Limmeng:

The best way to plan for such an (internal) audit, is to study their (the associates) process(es) documentation and create a 'memory jogger' from that. A checklist - especially one based on a standard, like ISO 9001 - won't help much.

Internal audits should be a verification of the implementation and effectiveness of the internal processes of that organization. Therefore, any planning and preparation the auditor does, should be based on those processes.

BTW - it would be very difficult for anyone outside to give you anything other than a very basic, generic checklist, so it's not going to be that much use to you.....

Lim,
The first thing to do is to identify the key processes, it looks like you have a good start on that.

To audit via the process approach, you will need to identify the inputs and outputs of the key processes. A good means to do that (and to audit) is using a turtle diagram.

If you go into the upper portion of the Cove web site, you will see a green bar called "post attachments list". You can search by document title. There are a number of good examples of turtle diagrams, audit plans (check lists) and other aids that I am sure you will find very useful.

Also,
Have you had internal auditor training? That is also a key requirement of ISO 9001. Perhaps a course on internal auditing would be helpful to yourself and others within the auditing team.