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What the application presented

The manufacturer held ISO 9001 and applied to add ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 to the same certificate, to hold a major OEM contract. Three sets of documentation had been produced separately, each on its own review calendar, and the application described a scope that covered both sites without saying how the two differed.

The recurring theme from the applicant's own customer audits was documentation present, practice divergent. That is a question the audit could test directly, so it shaped where the audit team spent its time.

How the audit ran

• Application reviewed and audit duration calculated from effective headcount, scope, complexity, risk category and the two sites, with the reduction that applies when three standards are audited together rather than separately.
• Stage 1 examined the documented information, the scope boundary, and whether internal audits and management review had been completed across all three standards. Two areas were raised as improvement requests: the shared risk method and the definition of the second site's boundary.
• Stage 2 was conducted on both shop floors, sampling operations, records, competence, internal audit effectiveness and corrective action against each standard's requirements at the point the work is done.
• Findings were graded and reported within five working days. The recommendation went to a reviewer who was not on the audit team, and surveillance was scheduled at the end of Year 1 and Year 2 against a single combined audit programme.