With offices in Cavan, Dublin, Belfast, England, Scotland and South Africa, Obelisk provide solutions and resources to industries across telecommunications, power transmission and distribution, renewable energy and tower infrastructure.
They are certified to ISO9001, ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 and in 2017, Obelisk asked Asgard Management Solutions to provide internal auditor training to 6 of their staff. We prepared the course content and over 3 days, we ran an in-house training course which included 3 key elements:
- Overview of ISO9001, ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 – we spent 1 day giving a clause-by-clause overview of the standards to ensure that the attendees had an understanding of the requirements. We included several case studies and scenarios during this element to ensure full understanding and also engagement of the attendees during the session.
- Auditing skills and techniques (theory) – day 2 involved the theory of auditing (why audit, what attributes are required in an auditor, what tools can be used, what problems can be encountered, how to record findings).
- Practical auditing - the final day of the course involved the attendees conducting internal audits of their own IMS. This exercise gave the attendees experience in auditing, in a real-life environment. We selected areas for audit that were tangible and familiar, particularly for novice auditors, and this allowed the attendees to apply the skills they had developed over the previous days. We shadowed the auditors through their preparation, auditing and report writing and gave a debrief at the end of the session.
The internal audit team are now equipped with the skills they need to audit their systems, not only fulfilling their ISO obligations but ensuring the IMS remains an effective, relevant and beneficial management system.
