NQA Interview with Matt Barker
Calculating Audit Durations
In this video, Adam Faiers from ISO Compliance Register interviews Matthew Barker, Information Security and Privacy Certification Manager at NQA. NQA is a leading UKAS/ANAB accredited certification body that provides certification, training and support services for ISO standards.
In this interview, we asked Matt all about audit durations, and how they’re worked out. This makes the video a great resource for anyone expecting an audit by NQA, giving you a good idea as to how long it will take.
Working out the duration of an audit is not entirely up to the certification body itself, but passed down by organisations such as the IAF, ISO and UKAS. It starts with the number of employees, then other inputs such as risk complexity, business activities and sectors it operates in. This means audit duration is largely based on risk level – the higher the risk, the longer the audit needs to be.
We also asked whether audit duration would be different between standards for the same organisation. Audit duration can differ, as each audit is individually worked out according to different factors and may be determined by different associations/bodies. For example, if an organisation has an audit for ISO 9001, it won’t necessarily be the same length as an audit for ISO 27001.
