What does a BRCGS audit look like?
The audit process is a structured sequence that evaluates compliance and recommends any actions you need to take to ensure your site meets BRCGS Global Standard for Food Safety requirements (and earns certification).
In a previous post, we looked at which areas of your business a BRCGS audit assesses. Here, we’ll break down the auditing process from start to finish to help you understand the different steps required to earn BRCGS certification.
Step 1: Submit an application
Your site submits an application to a BRCGS certification body for certification and confirms the scope of the audit. This ensures all parties understand the conditions.
The scope of the audit should include exclusions and additional modules. The Standard states that products can only excluded if:
- The excluded product(s) can be clearly differentiated from products within scope (i.e. they have a different physical appearance or packaging) and;
- The product(s) are produced in a physically segregated area of the factory (i.e. they are produced in a physically separate area and not in the same room).
Additional modules can be included where appropriate. BRCGS recommends this if you want to:
“…demonstrate compliance with specific sets of requirements in order to meet specific market or customer requirements without the need for a separate audit, thus reducing the number of audits at the site.”
If you wish to include an additional module (or modules) in the scope of your site audit, you must notify the certification body in advance.
The scope also needs to include the Product Category number and title. You can find this in “Appendices 6: Product Categories” in the Standard.
Step 2: Provide pre-audit information
You provide the certifying body with important background information. You should include:
- Company background and structure
- Summary of your site’s HACCP plan (or food safety plan) and critical control points (CCPs) Process flow diagram
- Simple site plan
- Management organisational chart
- List of products or product groups included within the audit scope
- Description of any special handling requirements (e.g., for allergens, claims or other certifications)
- Description of the site and building fabrication
- Typical staff shift patterns
- Production schedules, to allow audits to cover relevant processes (e.g., night-time manufacture or where production processes are not carried out each day or are only carried out at certain times of the day)
- Outline of any outsourced processes
- Any recalls that have occurred since the last BRCGS audit
- Any recent quality issues, withdrawals or customer complaints, and other relevant performance data
- Outline of operational controls, such as internal audits, testing and traceability
- any significant changes since the last BRCGS audit, where applicable.
Step 3: Third-party auditor conducts audit
There are three types of BRCGS audit:
- Announced: Audit is scheduled in advance
- Unannounced: Audit occurs without prior notice within the last four months of the audit cycle
- Blended: Audit is carried out remotely and on-site
We cover each of these in more depth in this post on BRCGS audit programme options.
Regardless of the audit type, the role of the third-party BRCGS auditor is the same. It’s their job to assess your site’s compliance against the latest version of the BRCGS Standard.
This part of the process goes like this:
- Opening meeting to confirm the scope and process of the audit
- Production facility inspection (e.g. site, production and storage) to review the practical implementation of the systems. This can include auditing good manufacturing practices, accuracy of process flow diagrams, product changeover and line start-up procedures, and observing product changeover procedures.
- Discussions with site staff and managers. For example, to confirm on-site procedures and the implementation of product safety and quality culture plans.
- Document review to assess HACCP and quality management systems
- Vertical audit, traceability challenge and mass balance, including a review of all relevant records of production (e.g., raw material intake, production records, finished product checks and specifications)
- Verification of the product safety management system, including the HACCP plan (e.g., CCPs and CCP monitoring)
- Label review, including assessing examples of product labels to check against specifications, label development processes and legislation
- Production facility inspection to verify and conduct further documentation checks
Once the assessments are complete, the auditor will:
- Put together a final review of findings in preparation for the closing meeting
- Hold a closing meeting to review the audit findings with your site (note that non-conformities are subject to subsequent independent verification by the certification body technical team)
Step 4: Addressing non-conformities
A nonconformity is a failure to meet specific criteria in the standard. Three types of nonconformities can be flagged in an audit:
- Critical: A critical failure to comply with a food safety or legal issue. Where a critical is raised, your company will either not receive a certificate or have its existing certificate suspended.
- Major: A substantial failure to meet the requirements of a ‘statement of intent’ or any clause of the Standard. Or, a situation that would, based on objective evidence, raise significant doubt about the conformity of the product being supplied.
- Minor: A clause has not been fully met but, based on objective evidence, the conformity of the product is not in doubt.
If nonconformities have been identified in the audit, the auditor has to issue them within 24 hours of the audit.
Your site then has 28 days to close out the nonconformities. All non-conformities raised by a BRCGS Auditor require root cause analysis to determine the root cause of the problem.
If you fail to close out a nonconformity within 28 days, you either won’t receive a certificate, or you’ll have your current certificate withdrawn.
When you have closed out nonconformities, the certification body then has 14 days to review submitted non-conformities and issue a grade.
Your grade determines your next audit.
The table below shows that sites issued with a D or the lowest C grade are audited every six months. Companies with an AA, A, B and top two C grades are audited every 12 months.
Where a grade is superseded with a +, the audit was unannounced.
Step 5: Audit report
As well as raising nonconformities, the auditor generates a detailed audit report, including details of nonconformities. This is then reviewed by the certification body’s technical team.
On completion of the audit, the certification body has 49 days to upload the audit report to the BRCGS Directory. This covers the site having 28 days to close out nonconformity. Plus, the certification body having 14 days to review the non conformities and issue a grade and 7 days for the certification body to upload the report.
When reviewing the audit report, the certification body audit team has the authority to change the grade of a non-conformity or increase or decrease the number of non-conformities raised by the auditor.
The certification grade is always awarded by the certification body, not the auditor.
Once the report is uploaded to the BRCGS Directory sites can give customers access to it. However, anyone visiting the BRCGS Directory can access a summary of the report.
Want to learn more about BRCGS Global Standard Food Safety and the audit protocol? We have two courses:
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