Internal audit is considered to be as one of the mandatory requirement of ISO 50001:2018, ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001 etc. which has to be fulfilled and in order to fulfill this requirement one has to be certified internal auditor to conduct the internal audit for which a person(s) has to undergo an internal auditor training. Having a certified internal auditor in your organization will help you to comply with the requirements of standard in an effective way or otherwise it may lead to only preparation of some documents which in turn mislead as it may contain false data. Well, some are not realizing conducting internal audit helps them analyse processes of their system, means whether things are aligned towards company objectives and strategies and what can be done to grow our system from good to excellent.
Internal audit steps
Following steps will help you to lead towards successful internal audit:
Audit Plan: The initial step towards a successful internal audit is an audit plan. Which brief the whole schedule of an audit. The audit program should be available to everyone as planned audits will help you to establish the culture that the auditor is here to help and at same time it put some positive pressure on employees to strive for results, which is good for management. Once the audit plan is made and circulated within the organization, the next step will be to confirm with the process owner on his availability as per audit schedule and once process owner confirms, the auditor should review outputs of previous results of internal audit and if found anything follow up is to done.
Conducting Audit: While performing an internal audit first thing that is to be kept in mind that it is not only about meeting legal compliance. The internal audit will be more about looking at processes against which energy related plans are outlined by the company. Are they monitoring and analyzing deviations in their energy performance? Are required operational controls related to energy, in place? Are they addressing non conformities and the corrective action to be taken against those activities? In short, we have to evaluate that the process meets planned conditions with respect to how it can interact with energy.
Audit Report: It is one of the crucial step and if it is not done properly it can lead poor repercussions. So, whether employees are doing well in the processes they are engaged or there are any problems, they should be aware of their performance and understand where are they lacking so that they can address and correct it. Opportunities for improvement are also addressed in the process while audit, sharing that opportunity for improvement with process owner and sharing his/her views on them can also add values to it.
Follow Up: Following up on the non-conformities or opportunities for improvement found during an audit helps to identifies the current status of the process. Well in most of the cases it was seen that follow up is the least considered done part of the internal audit. If there is no closed loop system in the organization, then there is no fun of conducting an internal audit at first place. Therefore, follow up helps you to mitigate the problems that are previously identified in the internal audit and prevent reoccurring of problems again and again.
Do I have to conduct separate audit for EnMS?
As per revision of ISO 50001:2011 into ISO 50001:2018, which makes it more compatible with other management system standards like QMS, EMS, OHSA etc. So, now you can audit the same defined processes in context of energy. Only thing that have to be kept in mind is to satisfy all the requirements of the standards while conducting an internal audit.
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