The International Accreditation Forum, Inc. (IAF) published a new guidance document for achieving a basic level of consistency for determining the audit time according to the application of the relevant requirements of ISO/IEC 17021-1 for audits of different management systems.

The growth in the number of management systems and respective reference standards for certification has led to the increase of different methodologies for determining the audit time, which include requirements partially or significantly different from those of the document IAF MD 5 which was basically designed for Quality Management Systems (QMS), Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OH&SMS). Furthermore, the determination of audit time becomes more complicated in the case of the combination of multi-site management systems and integrated audits of two or more different management systems.

To get a copy of the full document please click here:

https://iaf.nu/iaf_system/uploads/documents/IAF_ID14_2022_Issue1_25052022.pdf