CQI Webinar - Top Tips for Remote internal auditing

CQI Webinar named “Top Tips for Remote internal auditing” was held on 15^th Oct 2020. I summarized it for sharing below. Before the seminar, Mr. Alexander Woods as facilitator to introduce the seminar and speaker – Ms. Judith Hargreaves.

Firstly, Ms. Judith Hargreaves (NQA Regional Assessor) introduced NQA background that is top 3 of CB in UK.  In this talk, she would like to share the effective internal auditing.  She shared her auditing steps included confirming the scope, desktop or live - paperwork and checklist or improvement tools.

Then she mentioned the Pros & Cons of remote auditing in the following table. 

And then she discussed the planning for remote audit including the best method to view the information and communication with your customer.  Moreover, the members involvement of customer team should be agreed in advance on audit dates through detailed plan.  The plan included Date & Time, Location/Department/Function, Method, and Indicative Records Required.

During inviting confirmation and participation, it should ensure everybody knew their role for the day of audit and availability.  Test the communication methods such as Zoom or Skype should be performed before audit.

Ms. Judith Hargreaves always asked us to keep it simple, effective and enjoy the audit.  After that she shared some tips in Context, Leadership, Planning, Support and Operations, as well as, Performance Evaluation & Improvement.

i)                    Documented information (e.g. Quality Manual) could be assessed via email, verified through internal audit.

ii)                  For leadership, based on the quality policy to discuss risk, roles & responsibilities, customer focus. (Remark: Your role is really to verify you are doing what you say you are and you have information to check without heaps of paperwork to review.)

iii)                Quality objectives are the only required documented information which can be emailed over and then discussed.  (Can we verify if these are effective?)

iv)                We can be emailed documented information for monitoring & measuring resources (7.1.5.1), calibration equipment (7.1.5.2), competence & training matrixes (7.2) and documented information control (7.5)

v)                  In operations, could customer arranged virtual tour such as using mobile, camera or even drone. (But it should be safe!)

vi)                Sampling orders should considered compliance at random. Could it be online and screenshare?

vii)              Performance evaluation on documented information, management review and internal audits as well as non-conformances should be considered.

Finally, Ms. Judith Hargreaves shared some key points for participate to take away below.

i)                    If document could get by email, we had time to review it and prepare a bank of informed questions for audit use.

ii)                  Conversation is still very important.

iii)                External auditor managed audit day exactly and internal audit to conduct the audit in a relaxed timeframe.

iv)                Be aware of information security (e.g. GDPR)!

At the end, Ms. Judith Hargreaves showed NQA services to support company work / return to work safely. 

Q&A

Reference:

CQI-HK - http://www.thecqi.org.hk/

CQI-UK - http://www.thecqi.org/

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