Internal Auditing of Project Quality Plans

K

kgott

#1
I am not a very experienced internal auditor. WHile I have done a few less than 100 internal audits, I fear I may have only done 1 audit multiplied 100 times because I have not had the opportunity to learn from other and or more experienced auditors so I may be making the same mistake each time and not know it.

With this in mind I am going to audit a project quality plan for an environmental consultancy where things like ITPs etc are not used. I am working off the idea that the purpose of this is to establish whether or not all the “this-is-what-we-are-going-to-do” statements have in fact been done. This is the approach I’ve used in the past.

To make matters worse the project quality plan was written to address each clause of ISO 9001 but it’s a bit of regurgitation of the standard.

To my way of thinking; I use the project quality plan as the checklist (which is what I have done in past) and look for evidence that each requirement of the plan has been met.

This process with this kind of plan, seems a bit limited to me so something is telling me I should be looking for evidence of something else as well but evidence of what??????

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance
 
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harry

Super Moderator
#2
The project quality plan that I used and know of is basically a brief summary of the whole system as it applies to each individual project and with particular highlights of the key areas. It is useful as a guide during audits - the focus of which is still the processes involved and as documented in your QMS.
 

Colin

Quite Involved in Discussions
#3
I would agree with the basic premise that you need to see that they are 'doing what they say they do', but could you also relate that back to 'what the customer wants' and also 'what the standard requires'?

OK, I know we have a lot of debate on the cove regarding just what internal audits should check for and I largely agree that they are mostly for conformance with our own system, but I think it is a wasted opportunity if we don't relate that back to the standard too where possible.

In addition, you could check to see if quality objectives have been set and are being met and, depending on the maturity of the system, you could look at 'monitoring and measuring the processes' (8.2.3).
 
K

kgott

#4
The project quality plan that I used and know of is basically a brief summary of the whole system as it applies to each individual project and with particular highlights of the key areas. It is useful as a guide during audits - the focus of which is still the processes involved and as documented in your QMS.
I actually agree with that Harry. In my view a project plan for a company that specialises in projects should be only one or two paragraphs saying something like

" we will apply all of our project management processes to this project with the exception of xyz and with abc change to this or that procedure as the case may be."

My problem with this audit that I'm going to do now is that is that a major oil company requires us to have a project quality plan that “complies with ISO 9001” so I played safe and done a regurgitation of the standard but tailorised it as much as possible to the project.

I would have preferred to have written a plan that conforms to the definition of a quality plan as described at Note 2 of Section 7.1planning of product realisation.

Now I’ve got audit it but I’m not sure I’ll be doing it right by doing what I’ve done before. I don’t know if this is the right way or the wrong way.
 

Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Staff member
Admin
#5
Eh, I do not share your viewpoint of not being a very experienced internal auditor. It's true that I have learned a lot from my people here, and I appreciate your feeling you've missed out on that but I suspect you have learned more than you realize. For one thing, you recognized the rote nature of their documentation. :agree1:

Without having gone to the inside it's nearly impossible to form a better opinion. So just see what they have, see if they are following what they have defined and see if they know it's effective, why it is/isn't, and what they are doing about that. Not everyone needs an elegant system, but we all need a functional one that touches the needed points.

Does that help?
 
K

kgott

#6
Thanks for that Jennifrer, it does help. The difficulty I expereience is thinking that what I'm doing when I do this kind of audit is that I must be doing it wrong because its straight forward and dare I say easy, so I think I must be missing something out.

I would like to write a quality plan as referred to earlier that simply says that we will apply our normal processes and procedures to this project and then with the aid a table list the procedures and changes or limitation applicable to a given procedure but the big clients might not accept it. I guess sooner or later I have to bite the bullet and find out.

BTW, ever since I read Maslows obervation you have in your signature and I add to that Deming's statement that the role of a leader is to help others do a better job, the more easily I recognise poor leadership skills when I see it.

cheers
 
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