Top 5 ISO 9001 audit findings in construction

In almost every industry, ISO 9001 is a household word. The internationally recognized standard in the field of quality management is seen as a measure of transparency and reliability. To maintain the standard, the quality management system must be periodically audited by an independent certification body. DNV Business Assurance shares the top five common audit findings in construction and steel construction from its own benchmarking tool Lumina.

"There are quite a few ISO standards operating in construction and industry," begins auditor Albert Zwiesereijn of DNV Business Assurance. "ISO 9001 is about the quality management system, ISO 14001 focuses on environmental management systems, while ISO 45001 focuses on healthy and safe working. In addition, of course, we have the VCA, basically the 'license to operate' to be allowed to work on a construction site at all as (sub)contractors. All these standards describe what must be regulated, while an organization's specific management system determines and describes how these matters are regulated. Based on the collection of objective evidence, an auditor then tests whether processes and procedures are actually carried out that way in practice."

DNV compiled a top five most common audit findings that directly or indirectly relate to the execution of primary processes in concrete and steel construction. "The first standard element where there is room for improvement is '8.1 operational planning and control,'" says Zwiesereijn. "As an organization, you have to determine what requirements (criteria) are associated with a particular service and how you measure (control) that. A process must be set up for this. The goal is to ensure that when a building is delivered, all components meet the requirements. And in that process something is still sometimes missing. Whereas the earlier the error is discovered, the lower the failure costs are to correct any error."

The standard element "8.4 control of externally supplied processes, products and services" is also in the top 5 of common audit findings. Zwiesereijn: "In concrete and steel construction, you always need suppliers for your end product. They must also meet the requirements you set for them, both at the company level and at the service or product level. Think of the concrete mortar that has to meet a certain composition. You will have to monitor that somewhere in your process. After all, your customer should not be inconvenienced by the fact that you do business with external suppliers. For this, too, you have to set up a process to monitor the requirements and agreements you make with external suppliers."

Standard element "9.1 monitoring, measuring, analyzing and improving" is also a focus of attention. "The ISO standard prescribes that you must measure a number of things. As an organization, you have to determine what you want to measure and at what frequency. But that is not the end of the matter," Zwiesereijn states. "You also have to do something with those findings. In other words, you have to monitor, measure, analyze, evaluate and, above all, improve. If the measurements show that one concrete plant delivers too late every time, you call it to account. And so there are plenty of things you can measure and improve."

Part of the ISO standardization is self-regulation of the organization in accordance with standard element '9.2 internal audit.' Zwiesereijn: "We are hired as an external organization to audit the quality management system. However, this is preceded by a series of internal audits in which internal processes in each department are checked by people who do not work in the department in question. First of all, this requires some knowledge, skills and training in order to perform those internal audits correctly. An aspect that, incidentally, we as DNV can also provide, so that people are properly trained and instructed. What we often encounter is that an organization does not have such a plan or does not give it sufficient substance. A shame, because it is not occupational therapy; the goal is to identify and resolve internal deficiencies yourself."

Finally, lessons are not always learned from any deficiencies. "We notice this in standard element '10.2 Nonconformities and corrective actions' where organizations usually take too short a hit. They do implement a correction, but 'forget' to find out how the error occurred. Important for taking structural measures to prevent things from going wrong again," Zwiesereijn clarifies. 

DNV collects data from thousands of management system audits conducted by the certifying body worldwide. This data is stored anonymously in Lumina, a database of more than 2.2 million audit findings. A free customer portal allows you to compare your organization with other organizations in the same industry. Both nationally and globally. Take advantage of it!