Audit
Audit is a key management appraisal tool. It means literally, to hear.. It is concerned with the evaluation of a system for compliance with standards, regulations or legal requirements. Traditionally, large companies have had Internal Audit departments for many decades, concerned with the disposition of the company's budgets and expenditure, ensuring that the company's money can be accounted for in compliance with Company Law and that there are no opportunities for fraud or that there is no fraud taking place. This kind of audit is undertaken by accountants with specific financial audit training and registered with the IIA. Quality Audits are less concerned with tracking financial transactions and primarily concerned with ensuring the company's processes are being followed as laid down in the management system to deliver customer and stakeholder satisfaction. Quality Auditors have their own registration organization, the IRCA. One of the key features of this function is that it is independent of the line management responsible for doing the work, so that the findings can be unbiased and a true reflection of the state of the audited function.

Audit is an evaluation and appraisal activity and is not a super inspection. Although an audit may reveal errors and mistakes, correction of those mistakes is incidental to the purpose, which is to assess the adequacy, appropriateness and capability of the company's processes to meet the business needs. Many mistakes found may indicate that a process needs to be changed, and it is this that represents the audit finding, not the individual mistakes themselves, which are merely evidence to support the conclusion.

Key Benefits
Key benefits include:

• An independent honest appraisal of the state of the audited function or organization. Often, for senior management, there is no other way of obtaining this, as subordinates tend to paint the picture that will most favour themselves
• Allows the management of the company to focus on the areas of risk to future customer satisfaction thus maximize the effective use of their resources
• An important source of trend information that allows improvement of the company's process capability
• One factor necessary to achieve certification to most external management system standards

Capabilities
I have been a registered Lead TickIT Auditor with the International Register of Certificated Auditors since 1992 and am now also a registered ITSMF Auditor for BS 15000, the IT Infrastructure Library Standard for IT service Management. There are particular experience and competence qualifications required to become registered under these schemes, and to continue registration, competence is reassessed every three years, so by contracting an IRCA registered Auditor you are assured that the skills held are maintained at the best possible level.

TickIT is the IRCA sector scheme for software development. There are less than 100 people world-wide with this qualification. All companies these days are users and purchasers of software and IT, even if they do not develop it or offer IT themselves and often these companies do not have the in house capabilities to properly assess the real capabilities of their software suppliers. Having this specialist knowledge, as well as a general capability in Quality Assurance in the non-software domain, gives me an extra service that I can offer to firms in this position.

I am also trained by the Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute as a team member for process assessments against the Capability Maturity Model, a process maturity model based on the original work of Phil Crosby then adapted by Watts Humphries and others. I have also qualified as an IiP evaluator and in the past was involved in an IiP recognition project for a company I worked for. In addition to these qualifications I have either studied or attended appreciation courses in most of the other assessment and certification schemes available, including OHAS 18000, ISO 14001, EFQM, IEC 61508. I also have some limited experience of IIA standards.

In my career I have conducted all types of audits and assessments. Quality Audit can be divided into three main types. First party audits, where the audit party contracts an auditor to audit all or part of its own organization, ie internal audits. Second party audits, where an audit party contracts an auditor to audit an organization for which it has or intends to have a contractual relationship, ie a supplier or potential supplier audits. And finally a third party audit where an independent body, such as a certification or accreditation body conducts an audit on an organization on behalf of the community of potential customers of that organization, ie the audited organization has no intention to supply a product or service to the auditing organization. I have been conducting 3rd party audits on behalf of LRQA for 12 years, both as a full time auditor and as a subcontract auditor in recent years. LRQA clients I audit range from the very largest such as BT (100,000 people) to the very small, containing just a few members of staff, from the prestigious (Lucent, BAe Systems, Astrium, Vodafone, Honeywell, Hitachi, Royal Bank of Scotland, National Grid, Kvaerner, etc. to name but a few) to the almost unknown. I have also audited in several countries including the US, Japan, the EU and Eastern Europe.

For audits which are intended to support achievement of an external standard, such as ISO 9001 2000, there are some advantages in contracting someone who has, like me, a background in 3rd party audits, because I know what the certification body is looking for and how they are likely to view any particular circumstance.

Gap Analysis, Company Review, Mock Audit
I can perform a Gap Analysis of your company or chosen function against the requirements of the certification standard, either in preparation for a project or achieve certification or as a mock audit in preparation for the Certification Body's own certification assessment.

Supplier Audit
I can undertake audits on suppliers or potential suppliers where you have identified a risk for which you need extra confidence in their capability to meet your purchase requirements.

Information Request Form
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