Preparing for the Audit: Documentation and Tools
An auditor who starts reading procedures in the production office at the start of the audit has already lost the best hour of the day. Preparation is where audits are won: documents reviewed in advance, risks spotted on paper, questions drafted, and a route through the evidence decided before anyone is watching the clock. Clause 9.2 audits done well are mostly prepared before the opening meeting begins.
Preparation serves both sides. Auditors arrive knowing the process, the hazards, and the site’s history. Auditees know what will be needed and can have the right people and records ready. Surprises still happen, and should, but they should be about the evidence, not about basic facts the auditor could have read the day before.
Documents to review before fieldwork
Start with the system documents that frame the area under audit:
- The FSMS scope, food safety policy, and objectives relevant to the area
- Product descriptions, intended use statements, and current flow diagrams
- Hazard analysis records and the hazard control plan for the products in scope
- Prerequisite programme documents for the areas to be visited
- Procedures for traceability, nonconforming product, withdrawal, and emergency response
- Specifications for raw materials, ingredients, packaging, and finished product
Read them for internal consistency. Does the flow diagram include the rework step mentioned in the procedure? Do critical limits in the hazard control plan match the values in the monitoring procedure and the record form? Does the product description name the allergens the label declares? Every mismatch found at your desk becomes a precise question on site, where you can test which version people actually follow.
History: previous results and performance data
Previous audits tell you where the system has already failed and whether corrective actions held. Review the last findings for the area, the root causes recorded, and the agreed actions and dates. Repeat findings deserve direct attention: sample the same control early and establish whether the fix survived contact with normal production pressure.
Performance data widens the picture. Deviation logs, monitoring record trends, verification results such as swab and product testing, calibration status, customer complaints, supplier issues, and management review actions all point to where evidence is most likely to reward attention. A rising trend in hygiene swab failures in one room should shape your sampling more than a generic checklist does. Bring the data with you so discussions rest on the same figures.
Legal and customer criteria
Confirm which external criteria apply to the audit scope: relevant food law, customer codes of practice, and product claims such as allergen-free or ready-to-eat status. Auditing against an outdated customer standard or a repealed legal limit produces findings the site can rightly dispute. Check versions during preparation, not during the closing meeting.
Tools: checklists, sampling plans, and working papers
A checklist is a preparation tool, not the audit itself. Build it from the criteria and your document review: clause references, specific questions arising from inconsistencies, records to sample, and people to interview. Leave space for evidence and for following leads. Auditors who work down a purchased generic checklist ask every site the same questions and miss the ones unique to this process, this history, and this week’s changes.
Decide sampling in advance, then adjust on evidence. Note which lots, dates, and shifts you intend to trace, and how you will select records randomly rather than accepting a prepared bundle. Prepare simple tools: a notebook or device for notes tied to clause references, a camera where site rules permit it, a thermometer if you are competent and authorised to take independent measurements, and templates for recording nonconformities. Check site rules on photography, electronic devices, and hygiene requirements for visitors before the day, including protective clothing and jewellery rules, so logistics never block access.
Confirming arrangements with the auditee
Send the audit plan, confirm the opening meeting time and attendees, and request the documents and records you will need in a form you can use, including access to electronic record systems with someone who can navigate them. Confirm which processes will be running, which shifts are covered, and who can speak for each area. If a key process will not run, agree whether the audit proceeds on records and interviews, is rescheduled, or records a scope limitation.
Finally, prepare yourself. Review your own impartiality: have you worked in this area, advised on these procedures, or closed the previous findings? If your objectivity is compromised, say so before the audit, not after findings are challenged. Preparation includes knowing the limits of your competence too. Auditing a complex thermal process or a laboratory method beyond your knowledge needs a technical expert alongside you, arranged in advance.
Keep your preparation notes as working papers. Record what you reviewed, the inconsistencies you intend to test, the samples you plan to take, and the data that shaped those choices. Those notes prove due professional care if findings are later challenged, and they help a follow-up auditor understand why you looked where you looked. Preparation notes also improve with reuse: after the audit, mark which questions produced strong evidence and which were wasted effort, so the next preparation for this area starts smarter than the last one did.
Key points
- Review system documents before fieldwork and test them for internal consistency.
- Previous findings, deviation trends, verification results, and complaints should shape sampling and questions.
- Check that legal and customer criteria are current versions before auditing against them.
- Build checklists from the site’s own documents and history; use them as prompts, not scripts.
- Confirm people, running processes, record access, and site rules in advance, and declare any threat to your impartiality.
