ISO 17025 Accreditation Consultants Guide to A Technical Internal Audit

To obtain the ISO 17025 certification, it’s essential for laboratories to assess their operations and confirm whether they meet the ISO standard. The best ISO 17025 accreditation consultants agree that the most ideal way to assess any process is by performing an internal audit.

Internal audits and their reports are necessary to comply with most ISO standards. It involves analyzing technical and management activities to drive improvement and identify gaps.

However, while management audits are pretty straightforward, technical audits can be tricky based on your auditing experience.

Therefore, to give you an in-depth understanding of technical audits, the following will discuss the different various types of audits and provide practical tips for performing technical evaluations.

So, keep reading!

ISO 17025 Accreditation Consultants Guide to Technical Internal Audit

ISO/IEC 17025:2017 suggests businesses take a risk-based approach to their audits and an evidence-based approach to make decisions based on the findings.

Here are the three types of technical audits you can consider for your organization.

1. Witnessing

This method involves an auditor observing an auditee while they perform a particular activity. For example, your hired internal auditor may observe one of your employees perform a specific test to evaluate the degree of compliance. Here, you must provide the auditor with a documented test method to compare the test being performed.

The witnessing method requires the auditor to assess the specific tasks based on the applicable clauses. It means they will only assess the training records of the employee they just witnessed performing a test.

2. Vertical Audits

According to the best ISO 17025 accreditation consultants, a vertical technical audit involves assessing a single report and its compliance against the applicable clauses. The auditors will work systematically backward or forward to get to the point of reporting the specific result.

3. Horizontal Audits

Contrary to the vertical audit method, horizontal audit focuses on assessing compliance with all test methods against applicable clauses. Your auditor can use specific or all technical clauses to perform the audit on a sampling basis and assess all training activities.

How To Perform the Technical Audit for The ISO 17025?

With a performance-based approach, you can start auditing by selecting the ideal assessment technique. Your auditor shall focus on verifying supplied information, recording audit findings, and documenting observations against the criteria of your technical audits.

The audit should also assess the laboratory’s risk-based approach to see whether it can help satisfy the ISO 17025 and audience requirements.

Furthermore, you can use document review techniques, checklists, conduct interviews, and witness activities to perform the audit.

After that, you can classify your audit findings under the conforming and nonconforming categories.

In addition to that, keep in mind technical audits need to be interactive, whether they occur remotely or physically. The auditor needs to understand your technicalities and choose the audit technique based on its objectives, scope, and operational activities.

A Checklist to Perform Technical Audits

Irrespective of the auditing method, your auditor’s assessment checklist must include the following points.

• Seek objective evidence against the criteria of the audit.
• Document audit findings, observations, records supplied or used during the audit, and documents.
• Justify the found noncompliant and compliant factors against the audit criteria.
• Raise nonconformances after discussing the noncompliance with the organization.
• Use a comprehensive checklist from the organization or an accreditation body to conduct the audit.
• Assess authorization records, competency, and personnel training.
• Check the suitability of the facility and its environmental conditions.
• Analyze sampling and handling of calibration items or tests.
• Check the organization’s capability to perform selected methods and evaluate methods for measurements.
• Check the metrological traceability of measurement results.
• Evaluate procedures for internal controls and quality control result acceptability.
• Have technical records.
• Report the results.

Endnote

Having the best ISO 17025 accreditation consultants during internal audits can dramatically simplify the process for you. So, if this is your company’s first time conducting an internal audit, feel free to reach out to a certified auditor.

Author Bio- Damon Anderson is a retired ISO consultant and internal auditor. He uses his online presence to share his years of experience in the industry and insightful articles on ISO standards.