ISO19011: 2012 – The New Auditing Standard

ISO19011 the 2003 version has been replaced by the 2012 version.

This is the new standard known as the “Guidelines for Auditing Management Systems” document and is applicable to auditing amongst others the ISO9001, ISO14001 & OHSAS18001 management systems.

For the past 10 years auditors and lead auditors in the world have used the ISO19011 document as the benchmark for determining competence. With the continuing concern regarding the professionalism and competency of auditors the standard attempts to include and emphasize knowledge, skill and experience required to become an auditor or lead auditor.

Some key issues that changed between the first edition and this new one include:

  • The scope has been broadened from the auditing of quality and environmental management systems to the auditing of any management systems;
  • the relationship between ISO 19011 and ISO/IEC 17021 has been clarified;
  • remote audit methods and the concept of risk have been introduced;
  • confidentiality has been added as a new principle of auditing;
  • Clauses 5, 6 and 7 have been reorganized;
  • additional information has been included in a new Annex B, resulting in the removal of help boxes;
  • the competence determination and evaluation process has been strengthened;
  • illustrative examples of discipline-specific knowledge and skills have been included in a new Annex A

Previously the following criteria were used as a benchmark to determine competency of auditors and lead auditors (Table 1 on page 27 in the 2003 ISO19011 standard):

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Christel Fouche