A Message To Our Customers

NQA are first and foremost committed to ensuring the well-being of all customers, employees, associate partners and interested parties throughout this event. We are mindful of organisations’ needs to have business continuity in their operations, including maintaining required certification(s). We are working hard to address our client’s concerns and support the continuity of certification at this time.

To support both you and our colleagues, we are temporarily moving auditing activities to remote audits from the 30th March 2020 for an initial period of three months. This means that if you have an audit in the next three months, this will now be conducted remotely and virtually utilising technology. If the situation changes which enables us to conduct in-person audit sooner or we need to extend this period we will communicate this.

We are working hard to complete as much auditing remotely as possible. In circumstances where processes or activities are not able to be remotely audited, we will follow this up at a later date when it is safe to visit in person. If your certificate is due to expire, we may temporarily provide a six month extension following a remote audit.

What to expect

Your Assessor will contact you a minimum of 2 weeks prior to your audit to discuss the logistics for your audit and explain the process. If you want to get ahead of this we have created a document to support your preparation for a remote audit.

If your audit is due to take place prior to the 30th March 2020, your Assessor will contact you prior to the start of your assessment to give you the option of a remote or onsite audit. For the safety of all involved we strongly recommend a remote audit.

There may be elements of your audit that we are simply unable to complete remotely. If this is the case, your Assessor will inform you of the next steps and how we will ensure the integrity and maintenance of your certification.

IATF, FSSC, AS 91XX Certification

If you have certification to IATF 16949 or FSSC 22000, your audits will continue to be conducted onsite until further notice. We anticipate aerospace certification (AS 9100 etc.) will be moving to remote based auditing in the near future, therefore please expect further communication from us on this shortly. 

Please be assured that our business continuity teams are working closely with the IAQG (International Aerospace Quality Group), IATF (International Automotive Task Force) and FSSC to find a resolution. We will update our guidance and inform you as and when anything changes.

Keep in touch

Finally, we would like to assure you that we are focused on ensuring the continued validity of your certification and the continuity of our support. Our team are on hand to answer any questions that you may have and to steer you through this new way of auditing. 

We would like to thank you for your continued support and wish you, your families and your organisation well over the next few months.