ABSTRACT
Auditing is an important part of any management system, but maybe more importantly audits provide the opportunity to give confidence that the business is doing what it says it will do. In essence, audits are just a tool to help provide assurance and that their roots lie deep in corporate governance. This chapter outlines how to design an audit programme and suggests an audit model that organisations can pick up and use' quickly. In its simplest form an audit' is a technique used to test how robustly managed an issue is compared to a given standard. That standard could be legal requirements, organisational policy or industry best practice. In the UK the standard to which you want to determine your compliance on this subject is the Health & Safety at Work. The majority of audit programmes will have three basic components: an audit protocol, various sampling techniques and high validity and reliability.
