One of the major reasons for the perceived decline of the credibility of ISO 9001 certification the world over has been falling standards of third party auditing. Partly triggered by intense competition in the certification business and work pressures, auditors rarely get time or opportunity to develop and update their professional skills and knowledge. These shortcomings are felt both by auditors and more by the client organizations who adopt third party certification, at substantial cost, to drive their improvement programmes.

In a recent development, ISO has published a new Standard for Certifying bodies, ISO 17021 as per which, they have to substantially raise their standard of quality auditing and also ensure that the competencies of their audit team are commensurate with the sector specific needs. CII Institute of Quality had initiated trainings for certification body managements to aid them adopt the new standard, which were found very useful.

In order to address the auditors upgradation of skills, CII Institute of Quality conceived a focussed programme for external auditors, selecting only those areas where most dilutions occur during audits due to lack of proper understanding of the Standard, or the unwillingness to push the continual improvement measures fully.

The programme design was based on a questionnaire floated to professionals who assess Certification bodies and their auditors during Accreditation process. Based on these inputs and guidance provided by international bodies such as ISO / IAF, a two day Workshop on calibration of external auditing skills was designed, with participation invited from different certifying bodies to enable cross fertilization of ideas and generating consensus based understanding of concepts.

The first workshop that was sponsored by the Quality Council of India was held in New Delhi on 8 and 9 July attended by 23 auditors from 12 Certifying bodies. One of the main focus during the entire workshop was adjusting the level of auditing to the maturity level of the client organization, and to focus on the critical success factors of the organization. The entire workshop was exercise based on individual aspects of auditing, followed by discussion and an explanation of the concepts.

The workshop was conducted by Mr Anupam Kaul, Senior Counsellor, CII Institute of Quality and Ms Shobha Hegde, assessor with the Quality Council of India.

Participants, with auditing experience ranging from 20 years to beginners, were unanimous in their appreciation of the concept and the format of the workshop, as it helped them in not only increasing their knowledge base but also provided a forum for learning from each other's experience. For most it was  a unique experience.

Mr Girdhar Gyani, Secretary General, QCI inaugurated the workshop and applauded CII for coming out with such a unique programme. Mr B Venkataram and Mr Anil Jauhri from the National Accreditation Board for Certifiying Bodies in India, also addressed the participants.

CII-IQ intends to take this forward by organizing to 3 - 4 workshops every year.

For more details please contact Mr Anupam Kaul at anupam.kaul@ciionline.org or visit www.cii-iq.in