Jackie's 9 Audit Essentials

Jackie walks through her nine essential must-haves for her audit bag, ensuring her audits run smoothly and nothing is forgotten while onsite auditing.

What is in your Audit Bag?

I am heading back into the field this week, so I thought to share with you in no particular order what I have in my pack in my bag ready for an audit.

My glasses are very important! I need to see while I am auditing.

I use the surface pro don't hate me. It's so nice and light. Super easy to pack.

This is one of my favourite things to take on an audit! This is called a reMarkable, so it's a notepad, essentially.

The best thing about the remarkable is that you can write pages and pages of notes, and then when you're back at the office, you can save it as a PDF. So no paper wastage. I love how it is so easy to use.

Yes, it might a little strange but I pack my own coffee, decaf of course. I have learnt the hard way so coffee is always a must!

Again, it might be a little strange, an extension lead. Don't worry it is tagged and tested for any of you, OH&S auditors that are checking up on me. Don’t worry, it is current as well.

I take this on audits where I know it can be a bit challenging to get to a power point to charge my surface pro. It is always handing to have extension lead packed.

Along with my extension lead is my charging cord for my laptop. Again very important. I have forgotten it once before and that was a little bit stressful. So always remember to pack it now.

The seventh item is what I like to call my audit pack!

This is all the prep work that I've done. I have my little checklist and it has some previous, documentation, some previous findings, previous audit report page as well as a sign-in sheet.

So that's all of the documents that I can reference it easily. I am a little bit old school, a lot of you might just go electronic.

Everything else I do is electronic, but I do like to have some hard copy now.

I am sure everyone has their favourite pens.

These gel pens are beautiful pens. I have a red and a black one.

Don’t worry, I don't use red because people are naughty or anything. I use the red because it stands out to me. It also stands out, if I'm writing on any documentation that they might have.

A highlighter and pencil tend to come in handy as well.

It is very important to not to forget your ISO standards. We need standards. So I actually have them ISO 14001, ISO 45001 and ISO 9001.

Don't be afraid to hold or keep your standards with you, I always reference them.

It’s not because I don't know them, it's because I like using the words and the correct terminology when I am writing up my audit reports.

So, what have you got in your audit bag?

I'd love to hear if you've got anything different than what I've packed, or have I forgotten something? Please tell me if I've forgotten something!