Lead auditor

Most publicly traded corporations typically have an internal auditing department, led by a Chief Audit Executive ("CAE"), with lead internal auditors managing small teams of internal auditors for one audit engagement. Lead auditor is a position between senior auditor and head of division.

In public accounting firms, a lead auditor for an audit engagement is usually chosen from among the senior auditors.

Certified lead auditor

The certified lead auditor designation is a professional certification for audit team leaders working for certification bodies or performing supplier audits for large organizations. Lead auditor certification requires tertiary education plus two years of work experience as an auditor or lead auditor in training.

Certification programs

It is possible to become a certified lead auditor in the following ISO (International Organization for Standardization) certification programs:

ISO 9000

The ISO 9000 family of quality management systems standards is designed to help organizations ensure that they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders while meeting statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product.ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of quality management systems, including the eight management principles upon which the family of standards is based. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard must fulfill.

Third-party certification bodies provide independent confirmation that organizations meet the requirements of ISO 9001. Over one million organizations worldwide are independently certified, making ISO 9001 one of the most widely used management tools in the world today. However, the ISO certification process has been criticized as being wasteful and not being useful for all organizations.

Background

ISO 9000 was first published in 1987. It was based on the BS 5750 series of standards from BSI that were proposed to ISO in 1979. However, its history can be traced back some twenty years before that, to the publication of the United States Department of Defense MIL-Q-9858 standard in 1959. MIL-Q-9858 was revised into the NATO AQAP series of standards in 1969, which in turn were revised into the BS 5179 series of guidance standards published in 1974, and finally revised into the BS 5750 series of requirements standards in 1979 before being submitted to ISO.

OHSAS 18001

OHSAS 18001, Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems—Requirements (officially BS OHSAS 18001) is an internationally applied British Standard for occupational health and safety management systems. It exists to help all kinds of organizations put in place demonstrably sound occupational health and safety performance. It is a widely recognized and popular occupational health and safety management system.

Origins

Organizations worldwide recognize the need to control and improve health and safety performance and do so with occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS). However before 1999 there was an increase of national standards and proprietary certification schemes to choose from. This caused confusion and fragmentation in the market and undermined the credibility of individual schemes.

Development

Recognizing this deficit, an international collaboration called the Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) Project Group was formed to create a single unified approach. The Group comprised representatives from national standards bodies, academic bodies, accreditation bodies, certification bodies and occupational safety and health institutions, with the UK’s national standards body, BSI Group, providing the secretariat.

Lead

Lead (/lɛd/) is a chemical element in the carbon group with symbol Pb (from Latin: plumbum) and atomic number 82. It is a soft, malleable and heavy post-transition metal. Freshly cut, solid lead has a bluish-white color that soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed to air; the liquid metal has shiny chrome-silver luster. Lead is the heaviest (has the highest atomic number) non-radioactive element (two radioactive elements, namely technetium and promethium, are lighter), although the next higher element, bismuth, has one isotope with a half-life that is so long (over one billion times the estimated age of the universe) that it can be considered stable. Lead's four stable isotopes each have 82 protons, a magic number in the nuclear shell model of atomic nuclei. The isotope lead-208 also has 126 neutrons, another magic number, and is hence double magic, a property that grants it enhanced stability: lead-208 is the heaviest known stable nuclide.

Lead is used in building construction, lead-acid batteries, bullets and shot, weights, as part of solders, pewters, fusible alloys, and as a radiation shield.