An auditor tells you what is wrong, then leaves. Find it first and you still have time.
You send your procedures, your qualification and validation packages, and a sample of your records. We read every requirement of one certification standard against all of it, for one fixed price, and tell you what is wrong. Not only what is missing. What is there and not good enough. What one document contradicts in another. What a procedure claims that your records do not prove.
What you can be read against.
Each assessment is built against one standard, with its requirements taken out of the published text one at a time before anything is offered. Pick the one you are audited against.
Everything it does, and everything it will not claim.
The refusals matter as much as the rest. An assessment that promises more than it can see is worth nothing the day the auditor walks in, so this one draws its own boundary on the first page.
What it does
- Reads every requirement of the standard you picked, in the order the standard puts them, each one described in plain words
- Reads every document you send. Not a keyword search. Where a document answers a requirement, we name the document and the place inside it
- Judges what you sent against the requirement it is meant to answer, and says where it falls short
- Names what is missing outright, and leaves it visibly blank instead of quietly letting it pass
- Names what is there and not good enough: the limit with nothing behind it, the procedure written for an operation you do not run, the step that stops before the standard does
- Names what contradicts something else you sent, and what a procedure claims that its records do not prove
- Folds repeat findings back into the one problem underneath them, so you get causes and not a pile
- Gives you a requirement-to-document workbook in the standard’s own numbering, to hand straight to the auditor
- Puts the work in the order it has to be done, so you do not close a symptom and pay to do it twice
What it will not claim
- No grade is predicted. The auditor decides how serious each finding is, on the day, and a reviewer at the certification body goes over the report before the grade is set. Anyone promising you a grade is guessing
- Nothing is independently verified. It rests on the documents you send and on what you tell us about your operation
- We do not write your procedures and we do not tell you how to run the place. We name what would close each finding: the record, the decision, or the document that is missing
- It is not legal advice, and it is not a certification decision
Your result should not turn on which auditor walks in.
One auditor reads supplier controls closely and moves fast through validation. Another knows laboratories and has never worked with your manufacturing technology. A third reads the standard the way the reports they have already written taught them to read it. Every auditor brings a different career into the same building.
We do not answer that with one more opinion. Every assessment is read from several directions that cannot see each other — clause by clause, document by document, technical discipline by technical discipline, and written procedure against executed record. Those reads are then reconciled into a single finding set, and where forty findings all come from one missing control, you get the one problem with every affected clause attached to it.
Your documents are also read against each other, because that is the one thing no single read can catch. A supplier procedure saying annual requalification while the approved supplier list says every three years is invisible to anyone holding only one of them. It gets its own pass, and the conflict surfaces before the audit rather than during it.
Every requirement comes back with an answer. Where you meet it, the assessment names the document, the place inside it, and the evidence. Where you do not, it names exactly what is absent. The certification auditor still makes the decision — they simply have far less left to work out for themselves.
You are asked for exactly what is needed, once.
Nobody sends you a list and hopes. After you buy, you get a single guided request that names each document, tells you what it is in plain words, and gives the other names it goes by so you recognize something you already have.
Pick the standard
You tell us what you want to be read against. One standard, one purchase, one fixed price.
One guided request
Your procedures and controlled documents, your qualification and validation packages, and a sample of your records. It names which records and which date range, so nothing is open-ended and you are not uploading the whole file room.
We check it before the clock starts
We look at what arrived and confirm it is complete. If something important is missing you hear about it then, not five days later.
Five business days
Counted from that confirmation. Two files come back: the assessment, and the requirement-to-document workbook.
There is no meeting, and no discovery call. You are not booking a consultant. You buy it, you send files, you get the work back. The one exception is the walkthrough below, which is a call by design.
We never see your building. That is what the walkthrough is for.
Some requirements are about the building itself, or about what people actually do in it. Whether a sewage line vents inside the plant is not something a written procedure can answer. No document answers those, however good the document is, and every standard has a set of them.
We name them and we give them no finding. They stay open, and open is not a pass. Knowing exactly which ones they are is what stops you preparing for the wrong audit.
The walkthrough answers that set. It is offered on every assessment we sell, and it is priced separately from the read.
It is not an inspection, an audit or a site visit, and we will not call it one. You hold the camera and you choose what to show. Every finding that comes out of it says so, and says what was shown and on what date.
Facility Walkthrough, on Video
- A scheduled video call, on whatever platform you already use
- Your own people walk the operation, receiving through to shipping
- We say where to point the camera and ask the questions the standard turns on
- Three to four hours, on your schedule. Nothing is recorded
- Those requirements come back answered in the same report as everything else
If you want it closed, that is a separate decision.
The assessment names what would close each finding: the record, the decision, or the document that is missing. Then it stops. That is on purpose. An assessment that also sells you the fix has a reason to find more.
What it does do is make the fix easy to price. Once every problem is named and put in order, closing them can be quoted properly, as its own proposal with fixed terms you take or turn down. Buying the assessment commits you to nothing. It is complete and useful whether you ever ask for the fix or not.
An assessment tells you where you stand. Sometimes that is not what you need.
Sometimes one document is the whole problem. Sometimes you already know the standard and only need the system built. Sometimes the gap is in your people. Here is where each of those goes.
Regulatory work product, not legal advice. An assessment is prepared from the records you submit and is not legal counsel, not a certification decision, and not a prediction of any audit outcome or grade — those are decided by the certification body. It is a read of documents: no site visit is performed. Requirements that depend on physical conditions or observed practice are named as outside the read and get no finding unless the optional facility walkthrough is purchased, in which case each such finding states what was shown, by whom, and on what date. It relies on what you supplied and on your own declarations about your operation, none of it independently verified. All companies, documents and findings shown in examples are constructed; any resemblance to a real company is coincidental. Regulatory Options is not affiliated with or endorsed by NSF.