Accreditation Auditing Practices Group

Welcome to the website of the Accreditation Auditing Practices Group.

This website has been established as an on-line source of papers and presentations on accreditation auditing practices, against the International Standards and Guides produced by ISO/CASCO.  The ideas, examples and explanations given reflect the process-based approach that is essential for the accreditation of Certification/Registration Bodies (CRBs) that are themselves applying such an approach in the certification of organizations to ISO 9001 Quality management systems - Requirements. The website is primarily aimed at accreditation bodies and their auditors, as well as certification/registration bodies and their auditors.
   
The papers and presentations that make up the content of this website are not definitive.  They reflect a number of different views in accreditation auditing. As such, their content may not always be consistent.  It is not intended that the website's content will be used as specified requirements, an industry benchmark, or as criteria that all accreditation bodies, accreditation auditors, or practitioners have to follow.

Feedback from users will be used by the Accreditation Auditing Practices Group to determine whether additional guidance documents should be developed, or if these current ones should be revised. Comments on the papers or presentations can be sent to the following email address: charles.corrie@bsigroup.com.

The Co-Conveners of the Accreditation Auditing Practices Group are Mr Fei Yang (Deputy Director, CNAS, China) and Mrs Joana dos Guimarães Sá (from IQNet - the International Certification Network).

Accreditation auditing topics

• Introduction to the Accreditation Auditing Practices Group
• The witnessing of CAB audits by an accreditation body
• "Process Approach" based accreditation audits
• Auditor Code of Conduct and Ethics
• Criteria for Competence of AB Assessors and Assessment Teams
• Auditing Accreditation Scopes
• Auditing a CAB’s Conformity to ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015, Clause 5.2.3
• Auditing Certification Body management systems based on ISO 9001 (Option B from Clause 10 of ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015)
• Deployment of the Expected Outcomes Documents
• Control of CABs' foreign or remote locations
• The conduct of integrated assessments of a CAB operating more than one MS certification scheme
• Possible indicators of CAB Performance
• Good practices for AB’s and CAB’s in the Transition to ISO 9001:2015
• Auditing the CAB’s Rules governing Clients’ Statements of Management System Certification on Product Packaging or in Accompanying Information

Zip file of all the above documents

[TRANSLATIONS - Links to translations of the above documents]

Information on the Revision Status of the above guidance notes. 

Further reading:

The ISO Policy Committee for Conformity Assessment (ISO/CASCO) and the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) have published several documents relating to accreditation auditing.  These are available from ISO or the IAF, or from your national ISO member body or IAF member body.

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