When establishing an audit programme, the first thing to consider are the objectives of the audit.
When auditing ISO 20121, the objectives could include considerations for:
- Management priorities
what is important to the organisation's top management as an outcome of the audit. What are they hoping to achieve? - Commercial and other business intentions
What are the commercial or business realities as a result of the audit? - Characteristics of processes, products and projects, and any changes to them
What are the elements of the organisation, its processes, its events and its activities? - Management system requirements
Of course the major objective of an audit for ISO 20121 is to achieve conformity with the requirements of the standard! - legal and contractual requirements and other requirements to which the organization is committed;
Is there are requirement placed by industry, local government, funding bodies, sponsors, accords or charters to which the organisation subscribes, which require it to comply with ISO 20121? - need for supplier evaluation
Is the organisation part of the supply chain - eg a venue, hired-in event organiser, waste services contractor etc, whose compliance with ISO 20121 will ensure the client meets its conformity to ISO 20121 and sustainability objectives also? - Needs and expectations of interested parties, including customers;
Who are the interested parties that may be concerned with the organisation's conformity to ISO 20121 requirements? Is this the objective of the audit? - Auditeeās level of performance, as reflected in the occurrence of failures or incidents or customer complaints;
Is the audit being undertaken to proved that correction of previous failures or dealing with complaints is now actioned? - Risks to the auditee
Is the reason the audit is being undertaken to ensure that all risks regarding the sustainable production and delivery of the event are averted, minimised or managed? - Results of previous audits
Is the objective of the audit to ensure that recommendations or observations from previous audits have been actioned and improved upon? - Level of maturity of the management system being audited
The audit may be undertaken in order to gauge the progression of the implementation of the management system and it becoming more detailed and sophisticated to reflect the depth with which the organisation considers and manages issues.