All laboratory accreditation systems require the laboratory to carry out internal audits of its quality system. Formally this is an examination of the arrangements actually in place to achieve compliance with the relevant standard. The objective is to check that the system as operated in practice conforms to the laboratory’s stated requirements as included in its quality documentation. It answers the question ‘Do we actually do what we say we do ?’.
The outcome of the audit will, we hope, be a report which shows the systems examined and a confirmation of conformance with documented procedures. If this is not the case corrective action to improve the operation of the quality system is required and must be recorded. The corrective action must respond to the root cause of the problem and so strengthen the quality system so as to, ideally, prevent a recurrence of the problem.
Auditors require to be trained to take the correct approach to their task and also in how to write clear, concise and informative reports which will be acceptable to an accreditation body.
We can provide this training. A one day course, which includes supervised audits of some of your actual systems, is our normal approach. All participants will be provided with a certificate which confirms their training and can be incorporated directly in your training records.
In addition to audit training we can also carry out audits for you. Typically services would be as detailed below.
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Pre-assessment audit; a comprehensive audit of your entire quality system a short period before the actual assessment. This will identify any outstanding issues in time for you to correct them before the visit of the assessors. |
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Independent audit for smaller laboratories; auditors need to be independent of the functions which they audit. In a small laboratory this can be difficult to achieve for all functions. By using our external audit service to generate audit reports on these areas the problem is solved for you. |