When beginning the ISO Certification process, most people find themselves faced with three key challenges:
- determining what policies, procedures, and processes need to be implemented to achieve certification;
- determining what documentation is required to support those policies, procedures, and processes; and
- determining how to start creating (or updating) their documentation, and where to begin implementing (or updating) their ISO-compliant management systems.
This is true for those who are preparing for their initial certification, for those who are integrating a new ISO Standard into an existing system, and for those preparing for annual Surveillance Audits. In all cases, it can be valuable to have a pre-determined plan of work to help keep you on track, and to help you identify precisely what you need to do to prepare for your upcoming Audit.
The ISO Certification Manager module assists with this by automatically generating an ISO Checklist (i.e. a plan of Audit Tasks) that is Standard-specific, and designed to help you prepare for your Certification/Surveillance Audits. Two types of ISO Checklist are available, depending on your current position within the Audit cycle:
- The Certification Checklist, which is designed to help you prepare for your initial certification Audit; and
- The Surveillance Checklist, which is designed to help you prepare for annual surveillance Audits after certification has been achieved.
In both cases, the ISO Certification Manager provides a set of ISO Tasks that should be completed to help you achieve or maintain certification to your chosen Standard. These Tasks are spread out across a pre-specified period of time to assist you in planning the associated workload, with each Checklist being spread over one of three time periods, depending on your position in the Audit cycle:
- from the date that a new Standard is added to the date of your Stage Two Audit.
- from the date that the Certification Audit is completed to the date of your first Surveillance Audit.
- from the date that the Surveillance Audit is completed to the date of your next Surveillance Audit.
It is important to note that the ISO Tasks generated by a Certification Checklist are evenly spread throughout the available time, and that their precise timing will vary significantly depending on the time available between the date that the new project started and the date of your Stage Two Audit. In contrast, the Tasks generated by a Surveillance Checklist are fixed to specific months within a twelve-month period. Checklists for all new Standards within your system will begin as Certification Checklist, and will be replaced with the appropriate Surveillance Checklist upon their completion.
It is also important to be aware that all Checklists will be assigned provisional Stage One and Stage Two Audit dates when they are initially added to your system, and if you have a BABActiv system (i.e. you received your system from BAB) these can only be confirmed by the BAB Diary Team. These dates will be automatically updated within your system when the Team confirms them, and you will receive an email notification prompting you to accept the audit. If you do not have a BABActiv system (i.e. you obtained your system directly through the MyActiv Team, or one of our other resellers), then you will be able to freely adjust your Audit dates yourself.
In both instances, Activ will automatically reschedule your open ISO Tasks when your Stage One and Stage Two dates are adjusted, but you will have the option to re-adjust these Task dates to suit your needs if required (see Re-Assign or Edit an ISO Task).
