1. What is an Internal Audit
What is an Internal Audit? Quality Auditing Services Ltd Tel: +44 (0)

2. What is an Internal Audit:
An Internal audit is a key requirement of the ISO standards.
Internal audits are an objective self-assessment of your organisation’s management system.
The internal audit can be of a single management system (e.g. QMS, EMS) or an integrated management system (IMS).
Benefits of an Internal Audit:
There are a number of benefits from well planned and executed internal audits. These include;
Identifying areas of weakness within the management system before they can have an impact on your product / service.
Identifying areas for improvement within the management system in order to enhance efficiency.
Ensuring compliance with laws and other statutory requirements applicable to your organisation.

3. Who can carry out the Internal Audit:
Internal audits should be carried out by an individual who has no responsibility for the work being performed in the area being audited.
However, for small organisations with limited resource, this may not be possible. In this case, it is important that impartiality is strictly maintained or more preferably, arrangements are made for an independent third party to carry out the audit. Using an independent third party can have the added benefits of increased business oversight and objectivity.
Scheduling Internal Audits:
A ‘one shot’ audit carried out annually covering all business activities could possibly work for very small organisations. However, this one annual audit would just confirm compliance / effectiveness (or not) of your management system for that single ‘snap shot’ in time. More preferable is to develop an audit schedule / frequency that takes into consideration the complexity and importance of your organisation’s operations and the impact to the business, should there be a failure in any of these operations.

4. Performing the Internal Audit:
The audit is not an ‘out to get you’ activity. The audit should be carried out in a relaxed friendly manner with an atmosphere of co-operation.
Prior to the audit, a checklist should be prepared, detailing which processes will be reviewed and the evidence required to ensure the audit is carried out in a systematic way.
In order to verify that the activity being audited is being carried out correctly, you will need to do some of the following activities;
Review any relevant procedures prior to the audit.
Observe the procedures being carried out.
Review records and other documents associated with the activity being audited.
Talk to members of staff.
Review training and competency records.
Ensure that objective evidence is recorded. This evidence can be in multiple formats including; written and photographic.
Report the audit results to Senior Management.
Retain records of the audit.

5. Audit Findings:
The internal audit may have identified ‘non-conformances’. If this is the case then it is important that action is taken to ‘fix’ these non-conformances.
Review any non-conformances to prioritise the order of which these should be closed out.
NOTE: Non-conformances relating to breaches of legal requirements or those currently having a direct impact on your product or service meeting client requirements should be closed out first.
There are several stages to go through when closing out non-conformances. These are as follows;
Take Containment Action (Action taken to stop the issue right now)
Carry out Root cause Analysis (To determine what caused the problem to occur in the first place?)
Decide on Corrective Action (What action needs to be taken to eliminate the root cause?)
Implement Corrective Action
Follow up (After a suitable amount of time review the corrective action to ensure that it was effective)

6. Quality Auditing Services Ltd is able to help you with your Internal Audit programme.
For any queries please do not hesitate to get in contact;
Quality Auditing Services Ltd
Tel: +44 (0)