A safety audit is a systematic, documented process of ensuring compliance with safety regulations, plans, and results. It determines whether these arrangements are implemented effectively to achieve the organisation’s safety objectives.
Safety auditing is critical to an effective safety management system, ensuring organisations are compliant with regulations, standards, customer, and supplier demands. Most importantly, it ensures the safety of the employees and contractors working for and with the organisation.
The preparation of a safety audit can be summed up in six steps. These steps guide you through determining the scope, setting audit criteria, choosing the appropriate audit method, forming an audit team, establishing contact with the auditee, and finally, creating a detailed audit plan.
Preparing a safety audit
- Determine the scope of the audit. The scope and the goal of the audit should already be set by management and the lead auditor in the audit plan. Depending on the level of detail within the audit plan, the scope can be further defined.
When (further) defining the scope of the audit consider the following:
- The extent of the goal of the audit
- The type of audit; Internal, or third-party
- Resources available for the audit
- The regulatory scope of the audit
- The (physical) constraints of the audit
Remember to start describing and saving the steps taken from the start to the end of the audit. This ‘audit trail’ will become invaluable when accounting for the audit findings in the audit report.
- Determining and reviewing the audit criteria. Compliance and effectiveness can only be established with pre-defined criteria. Therefore, it is important to determine what these criteria are. Audit criteria can come from a variety of sources. Some of the most common are:
- Regulations
- Supplier or customer criteria
- Internal procedures and policies
- Determining the audit method. Audits are often conducted using a variety of methods. They can be conducted by interviewing and reviewing data and/or documentation and observations. All of these can be conducted in person or from a distance. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. The right method is dependent on the scope of the audit. When determining the audit method, also think about which specific tools and working documents to use when conducting this method. Examples of these are:
- Questioners
- Bowtie analysis for risk assessments (ie. with Presight OpenRisk)
- Checklists
- Process descriptions
- Establishing the audit team and dividing tasks. Audits are often conducted in pairs with one audit team leader. Depending on the scope of the audit, (external) experts can also be part of the audit team. Consider the necessary competence, skills, knowledge, and experience of the team members when establishing the audit team. After having established the team, decide on the tasks of each team member.
- Establishing contact with the auditee. Before the audit can be planned out in detail, it is the responsibility of the audit team leader to establish initial contact with the auditee (the person being audited). This initial contact aims to provide information, gather necessary details, and make clear agreements on the following points:
- Communication channels
- Objectives and scope
- time planning and team composition
- Access to documentation
- Confidentiality
- Risks and opportunities
- Legal and contractual requirements
- Safety rules
- Facilities: Confirm the availability of facilities for the audit team.
- Guides and observers: Decide on the involvement of guides and/or observers (such as a novice auditor seeking to expand their knowledge) and define their roles.
- Establish the audit plan. The last step in the preparation of the audit is establishing the audit plan. The audit plan is closely related to the audit scope but cannot be finished before addressing all the previous steps. The audit plan is a collection of all the things that have been decided on the previous steps. To sum this up:
- Scope and goal of the audit
- Location and interviewees
- Audit criteria and checklists
- Time plan
- Available resources
- Team and tasks
Once this final step in the preparation process has been completed the safety audit can proceed.
