Benchmarking HSEQ audit programs

Best practices and challenges

Opinion

“In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” —Michael Apostolius, Proverbs, fifteenth century

The audit management processes and principles of ISO 9001:2015 and 19011 have become an important concept in learning how to manage HSEQ audit programs more effectively. An especially useful quality management tool has been competitive benchmarking. Companies use benchmarking studies to identify best practices to incorporate into their programs. In conducting benchmarking studies, evaluators often also identify the biggest common challenges facing audit program managers.

This chapter discusses some of the best practices and challenges associated with HSEQ audit programs. The conclusions are based on several benchmarking studies and third-party