ASQ CQA – 3 Auditor Competencies Part 2

3. 3B On-site Audit Resource Management

Coming to the second topic, which is on site audit resource management. So now here you are at the site, at the audit site and you have to manage this audit as an audit team leader or even as an auditor. One of the most important thing is managing time. When you are at site, most of the time you will have that say two days audit, three days audit, and many times this might be just one day audit. You have to manage this audit during this time. So time is precious.

So you need to manage your time very well. So the points on this slide are mostly based on my personal experience in auditing. The first thing is you need to plan well and execute the plan. And when I say plan well, you need to have the timings at what time you will have opening meeting. So we will have opening meeting from 08:00 to 830, and then after 830 we will have individual audits, let’s say 830 to 930.

We will have audit of receiving at from 930 to 1030, we will have auditing of design department and so on. So you need to make this plan, send it to audit. Before you visit the audit site, make sure that they agree with the plan, because audit also need to plan their people. Audited need to make sure that in the opening meeting the senior management is available. In the design audit, the head of design department is available.

So if you send the plan well in advance, there is a good chance that your audit will be successful. And if auditing is looking for some changes during that initial planning stages, make sure that you make changes accordingly. Now, once you have an agreed plan and then you go to site and then you start your audit process, you start with the opening meeting. In the opening meeting, make sure that you check whether this plan is still valid or not. A few things might have changed in auditing organization.

Some people might have moved around, someone might be on vacation or whatever it is, check with them whether they are still okay with the plan which you have here. And if there is any need to make any change, make changes at the opening meeting itself. Because changes do happen.

Sometimes changes happen because of auditing, because some of the person from auditing might not be available. And sometimes these changes even happen because of auditor as well. So the auditor was expected to spend 1 hour in material receiving from 830 to 930. But then there were few things which took more time. So auditor, instead of looking at two samples, auditor had to look at more number of samples and then auditor might have overrun the time. So things do change as you do audit.

So if things are changing, then keep the next person informed. So if the audit was from 830 to 930 in the material receiving section and if you are getting delayed and your next audit is in the Design Department, make sure to send that information to Design Department that we are running ten minutes late so that they can plan things accordingly.

When it comes to managing time, auditor or the lead auditor should manage the time and should control the time well. Don’t leave that to auditing because many times I’ve seen auditing would be interested in wasting the time and making sure that audit is not effective. I’m not blaming someone, but this is my personal experience that when you are doing audit as a second party or a third party audit, many at times auditing might not be interested in the audit. So they might want to delay you, they might want to divert your attention to something else. So make sure that you are focused and you manage your time very well because if you don’t do that, you will not be able to meet the objective of the audit. Another important thing which I have learned hard way is that when you plan for all the timings in the audit, make sure that you keep some time for making your notes as well.

Because before the closing meeting, you need to have some draft report, some handwritten report or whatever you have. You need to consolidate your thoughts, you need to consolidate the audit result. So you need to keep time for that as well. Time to prepare for the closing meeting, time to consolidate your notes, have discussion with other auditors as well. So make sure that you have time assigned for this activity as well.

4. 3C Conflict Resolution – Part 1

Process, there is always a possibility of conflict. There might be a disagreement between auditor and auditing. And this is where these skills of conflict resolution will come handy. Before we talk about conflict resolution, let’s understand what is a conflict. Conflict occurs whenever people disagree over their values, motivation, perception, ideas, or disease desire. So this is an academic definition of conflict. So conflict happens when there are disagreements, when there are two different opinions, when there are two different perceptions, when there are two different ideas.

So whenever there is a difference between these, the conflict will happen. Now this is a typical dictionary type of definition, but now let’s see the conflict in context of audit. So when you do audit, conflict could occur in terms of disagreement. So as an auditor you will say something, but auditing will not agree to that. So there is a disagreement, there is a difference of opinion, there is a difference of perception. So this is one type of conflict which could happen during audit, which is disagreement.

The second thing which could happen is audit delay tactics. So audit deliberately wants to delay the audit by putting some hurdles in the audit. So this is another type of conflict which auditors need to be aware of and should be able to handle diplomatically. Another type of conflict could be interruptions where the audit interrupts in one way or other the audit process.

And the example of that could be when you’re doing Metals Management audit. Then audit might say, you know what, the metals management manager had to leave early today because of a family issue or because there is an urgent meeting with a client. Whatever it is, auditing might want to interrupt the audit process. So these are some of the examples of conflicts which could happen during audit. To understand this agreement, let’s take an example, and this is coming from my own personal experience.

So I was doing audit of a design contractor. So this design contractor was supposed to work for our company and was supposed to design a plant. And in designing a plan, let’s say the output of that was number of drawings. So let’s assume that this particular contractor was supposed to make 100 drawings of the plant and give it to the client, to us. And I was doing audit of that contractor. So any project will have a deadline.

So this project also had a deadline, and since the contract was of long duration, let’s say for one year, so you cannot wait for all those 100 drawings to be completed and then you pay to the contractor, okay, this is 1 million which we agreed we will give you once you complete 100 drawings. So that doesn’t happen because the contractor also need to pay salary to their people. So there was a mechanism to pay to the contractor monthly based on the progress achieved. Now these are 100 drawings, let’s say for simple example.

And now how do we pay this contractor based on what? So we pay the contractor based on the progress of each of the drawings. So progress milestones were established to keep things simple. Let’s say the first draft, which this contractor was supposed to provide, was considered as 50% progress. So the contractor will design something, make a draft. So once the draft is ready, then the contractor can claim 50% progress. So let’s say out of 100 drawings, let’s say if ten drawings, the draft was completed.

So for those ten drawings, the contractor can claim 50% progress. So that way progressively the contractor can get paid. And once the draft is prepared, internal checking is done. Then there was extra 10%, then 10% for incorporating internal comments, then another 10% when the client checks the drawing, and then the final 20% when everything is done and the drawing is issued.

So this was the mechanism to pay for the drawing. Now, when I did audit, I was just looking at the progress of these drawings and I see that a lot of drawings had a progress number as 49%. Now, my understanding was that if the draft is completed, you get paid 50%. But now what contractor has done is for many of these drawings, the contractor claimed 49% progress, saying that okay, draft is still not final, but most of things have been done. So in the audit, when I looked at number of these drawing samples which were in the draft stage, nothing was done on those drawings.

So I could see a plain paper and the drawing name and the drawing number. That’s it. So nothing on the drawing. Now how, how could contractor claim 49% progress? But contractor from their own point of view, they say they could claim anything depending on the work they have done up to 50%. Once they have issued the draft, then only they can claim 50%. But in my understanding, nothing was done.

So there was no reason to claim anything. So this was a disagreement which ended up in getting senior management involved in the audit. So this is the type of disagreement you can have. And based on my involvement in audits for last number of years, I can have hundreds of these examples. So this is one example that where disagreement can happen and those disagreements need to be resolved. Those disagreements could be resolved by talking, looking at things, getting management involved in many other ways. And this is what we are talking here in conflict resolution. So this was one example of a conflict. Now how do we handle these conflicts? Let’s look at some of the ways or some of the approaches to handle the conflict.

The first thing you might want to ask yourself, is it worth, is this conflict worth? If there was a minor thing, is it worth going into disagreement, talking about that, spending time because you have limited time to do audit, so you want to get the audit done that’s the first thing you might want to ask. If it is not, then move forward. Leave it because you have a number of things to do.

The second way to handle conflict could be clarification where you can ask a question, you can request information and based on that you can decide what way you want to go. Third way could be reiteration of ground rules. So you have some ground rules. So in the opening meeting you might have clarified this is the way we will be classifying nonconformities minor, nonconformity major, nonconformity. But then if there is a disagreement on the classification of the non conformity, you can always reiterate the ground rules.

This was the ground rule and based on this we are doing that. Another approach could be intervention by other authority. And the example which I was talking to you earlier about claiming the progress on the drawing there, I need to get the senior management involved. So this is another way to handle the conflict involving other authority.

Another approach which I find many attempts useful is use the cool down period, take a break, if you have a disagreement, leave it for some time, move to the next item and then you can come back later on that. So if you find a problem, if you find an issue rather than going into disagreement and arguments, leave it for some time. Talk to your other audit team members, they can also look at other areas and if the thing which you have seen is minor or not very significant, you can let it go.

Or if your other auditors also find similar sort of thing, then probably you can take it more aggressively. So these are some of the ways or some of the approaches which you can use to resolve conflict. So these approaches are something which I’m talking based on my experience. But then there is a formal way.