Certification audit durations
Or FTEs and other mysteries. All certification companies are governed (within Australia) by JAS-ANZ (Joint Accreditation System Australia New Zealand, I know you all wanted to know that!). Their official ‘name’ is a Conformity Assessment Body (let’s just call them CABs or certification bodies). They are granted accreditation to conduct conformity assessments on products, processes, systems and standards which if successful results in a third-party endorsement or a certification. As part of their accreditation, CABs must adhere to a set of rules around audit durations which are based on the risk and complexity of the conformity audit. This aspect of the certification process is rigorously defined and checked both by the CAB themselves and JAS-ANZ.
Such durations do take into consideration industry needs, published standards, industry expectations, etc. The number of employees, full time or full time equivalents have an impact. As do the number of sites being audited, what operations are conducted at each and how many employees are actually conducting what activities. Most CABs feed such information into an algorithm and there you have it.
Once defined in a quote or a booking form, then there are very few interpretations allowed. So if it says an audit will ‘last’ 6 auditor days, the records must demonstrate 6 auditor days. Whether you do it by 6 auditors on one day or 3 auditors over two days, etc, they must match.
However the one big interpretation is the number of full time equivalent (FTE) employees and the number of people conducting the same activity. It is these interpretations that can cause the differences in quotations you will receive from a certification body.
To get the best results consider the following. Define who is full time, who is part time, who is casual. You can find this information from your employment contracts. Just keep a summary. For the part timers and casuals, simply convert / gather the time in hours, divide the number a full time is expected to work and get your FTE. So when you are asked, just produce the spreadsheet and there is no argument.
Hint: make sure there is some correlation with your organisation chart.
The next biggest definition is how many people are doing the same job. Remember, make your best estimate as to how many people are doing what and record it. Then discuss this data with your certification body. You will be rewarded.