Background: During an audit, 2 auditors are auditing for a whole day together, as mentioned in the audit plan.
Question: Without any indication in the audit plan of what the auditors are doing in detail, is it acceptable that the CB calculates 2 man-days for this audit or is an increasement of the total audit time to be applied?
How much of the audit team’s total audit time spent together is acceptable without correction/deduction of the calculated and recorded audit time?
September 2025
Background: Two auditors auditing the whole day together (auditing the same auditee) normally counts as one auditor day.
1) Giving no indication in the audit plan of what is the responsibility and tasks of each team member is not fulfilling 9.2.2.1.5 of ISO/IEC 17021-1, regardless of the audit duration aspect.
2) Generally, it can be expected that each audit team member audits separately most of the time of the audit. There may be some situations where it is needed to audit together. Actually, auditors can be together auditing the same process or auditing compliance with the same clause they can be auditing different aspects, compliance with different requirements, different processes, different documents and different people.
The audit team’s total audit time spent together which is acceptable is the time that allows for an effective audit which needs to be specified in the audit plan. When drafting the audit plan, there should be consideration of the minimum audit duration. Also during the audit (when adapting the plan) the minimum audit time should be respected. It is not appropriate to establish minimum % or to try to quantify the time auditors should (or should not) be together.