Auditor Competencies in their Sciences and/or Disciplines

Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Staff member
Admin
#11
Jennifer, you are correct regarding requirements. Yet we see post after post where the obvious question is the independence and/or competency of the auditor.

To me that suggests that the requirements, or more precisely, the enforcement, may have gaps.

That is what this post is for, to at least allow some blowing off of steam.

Hope this helps.
Every year I am required to list organizations I have worked for/consulted for in the past year. They are marked off the list of who I can get assignments for. The CB handles it.

As for competency, I see it all over the map based on the audit reports I receive in my packages. More than once I've looked at it and decided "He's past his expiration date." and there is at least one of my trainees who is exhibiting a struggle with learning things related to the technical aspects of auditing. I find they often get tunnel vision when on their training audits under my observation. They always improve when I give them a copy of my turtle notes sheet and insist they use it so they can benefit from its facilitating a process audit.

Some of the variation involves an urge to treat the audit like a compliance audit. I have seen that with both inexperienced and highly experienced people. It comes down to failure to use proper questioning and follow up questions, because of course we are supposed to notice when regulations aren't being followed - the trick is to call out the nonconformity for what it is, not the symptom. And I have seen a lot of variation on that too, plus the urge to claim ALL documents must be in the controlled document system. Please...

I can vouch my own CB has recognized the need for tighter qualification program. I put in for the Training Manager job and was not selected in the final round. Oh well. I hope he does a good job. :cfingers:
 
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Sidney Vianna

Post Responsibly
Staff member
Admin
#12
The lead auditor is meant to decide when additional technical expertise is needed to plan the audit or to conduct the audit investigation.

If such expertise is needed to fulfill the audit objective then the lead auditor is obliged to make recommendations to the audit client for the audit to be feasible.

If such expertise is not forthcoming then the lead auditor advises the audit client that the audit objective cannot be fulfilled.
John, that might be the THEORY. In practice, though, it is a very different story. When it comes to third party auditing, most certification bodies want to maximize auditor's usage rates and deem each and every auditor "competent" to as many disciplines, schemes, standards, SIC codes, etc as possible. In the real world, audit team leaders get the assignment from the people responsible for scheduling the audits and run with it. They don't question if the audit team has the necessary competence to perform the audit or not. They just do it.

Realizing that auditor competence is a serious issue, ISO CASCO set about and is developing a number of standards *to beef up the requirements for auditor competence determination for different disciplines.

But, as mentioned already, developing standards and not having effective enforcement is the same as NOT having standards.

Accreditation bodies, supposed to oversee the certification bodies as how they assess their staff competence, suffer from the same challenges:

They, themselves (the AB's) have a hard time ensuring their own staff, including the AB auditors are fully competent to assess the CB's. Just like in the CB world, AB's have a significant problem of consistency and personnel caliber. They have some extremely competent people as well as incompetent people in their ranks, despite the fact that ISO 17011 requires them to monitor and "assure" the competence of their personnel.

So, the competence determination and assurance challenge happens at all levels in the conformity assessment world.



*
ISO/IEC 17021 accredited Certification Bodies should be aware of developments in the ISO/IEC 17021 series of documents.

CBs should note that TS documents are Technical Specifications and not direct requirement documents, however the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) has adopted these and they therefore hold the same status as IAF Mandatory Guidance i.e. CBs must pay due cognisance to them within their accredited activities.

IAF has confirmed that the ISO/IEC TS 17021 documents are endorsed normative documents to be applied in conjunction with ISO/IEC 17021, and the deadline for implementation is two years after publication. This bulletin overviews the implementation requirements for the new TS documents.

ISO/IEC TS 17021-2

Competence requirements for auditing and certification of environmental management systems

This TS specifies additional competence requirements for personnel involved in the audit and certification process for Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and complements the existing requirements of ISO/IEC 17021.

This TS was published in August 2012 with a 2 year implementation set by IAF, therefore CBs should be taking account of it by August 2014.

At your next UKAS assessment, the assessment team will review your plans to implement this within your competence system.

ISO/IEC TS 17021-3

Competence requirements for auditing and certification of quality management systems

This TS complements the existing requirements of ISO/IEC 17021. It includes specific competence requirements for personnel involved in the certification process for quality management systems (QMS).

This TS was published in May 2013, again with a 2 year implementation set by IAF, therefore CBs should be taking account of it by May 2015.

At your next UKAS assessment, the assessment team will review your plans to implement this within your competence systems.

The following Technical Specification has also now been published:

ISO/IEC TS 17021-4: Competence requirements for auditing and certification of event sustainability management (October 2013)
ISO/IEC TS 17021-5: Competence requirements for auditing and certification of asset management systems (April 2014)
Draft Technical Specifications

For information, please note that two further TS documents in this series are currently being drafted:

ISO/IEC DTS 17021-6: Competence requirements for auditing and certification of business continuity management systems
ISO/IEC DTS 17021-7: Competence requirements for auditing and certification of RTS/road traffic safety management systems
 

John Broomfield

Staff member
Super Moderator
#13
Sidney,

Thanks and I agree. But we should all realize how our management system is meant to work.

It seems that we have a failure of some/many ABs to audit how the CBs ensure they assign competent teams and how they support their audit team leaders in verifying competent audit teams.

Are the CBs required to have a CB-designed service specification for each client that specifies the competencies required with evidence that it is used for planning, executing and reviewing each audit?

Pretty basic really but I guess it seems cheaper not to bother; at least until the offending CBs are forced to pay the price of nonconformity.

John
 
#14
The lead auditor is meant to decide when additional technical expertise is needed to plan the audit or to conduct the audit investigation.

If such expertise is needed to fulfill the audit objective then the lead auditor is obliged to make recommendations to the audit client for the audit to be feasible.
This is the difference between the theory of the guidance in ISO 19011 and the practical application of audit management as applied by a CB. Quite different. Ever since I started as a 3rd party auditor the only "lead" has been restricted to the conduct of the actual audit and some planning. There are far too many constraints on auditors to be assigning technical resources etc IMHO. It's down to a member of management generally speaking, to arrange this.
 

John Broomfield

Staff member
Super Moderator
#15
This is the difference between the theory of the guidance in ISO 19011 and the practical application of audit management as applied by a CB. Quite different. Ever since I started as a 3rd party auditor the only "lead" has been restricted to the conduct of the actual audit and some planning. There are far too many constraints on auditors to be assigning technical resources etc IMHO. It's down to a member of management generally speaking, to arrange this.
Andy,

Yes, the role of lead auditor in CBs is split between CB management and their audit team leaders.

But it appears this split role has allowed the responsibilities for assigning competent audit "teams" to drop through the cracks.

No one is accountable.

Dare I say that expecting an auditor to be a Jill or "Jack of all trades" is not the answer.

John
 
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