Boundaries of the external auditors.

No. There are two or three options: 1) use a surveillance visit (or 2) to accomplish the transition. 2) use a reassessment (3rd year) visit to upgrade or (if the others didn't work) have a special, additional visit (at extra cost).

No new stage or 2...

 

Really? That sounds expensive! You were already 2008 certified?

 

The ISO/TC 176/SC 2 Home Page is a good place to visit for information describing the expectations of the revised standard, and to your question, IAF ID 9:2015 gives Transition Guidance. Please keep in mind this document might change; I have seen the document about Risk Based Thinking change, and replace N1222.

Anyway, The rules I am required to follow are: Transition must be done with Stage 1 and Stage 2, and the audit time cannot be reduced based on familiarity through past audits, etc. A gap analysis might serve as a Stage 1 depending on the outcome. It makes sense to do this at a recertification time because of the cost, but everyone is expected to have transitioned by September 2018 (I don't remember which day).

Meanwhile, auditors are expected to audit to the current standard; but if I were to see demonstration of risk based thinking and identifying relevant interested parties/stakeholders, who am I to argue? After all, risk has been inherent in the 2008 version and we've always been expected to identify the requirements from customers; regulation is mentioned in 4.1 and a blanket blurb is expected to make clear (though it often is not) that services are a type of product in the 2008 version.

I hope this makes sense!

 

Training in my case included a case study in identifying potential stakeholders, and determining relevance.

If your product is subject to, for example Underwriters Laboratory requirements due to industry/customer requirements, auditors will expect to see the organization has identified that. Some things are obvious that way. Others might not be clear to everyone, but can be raised as questions if auditors observe something that could impact the organization (picket signs?) and wonder if the organization has thought to include, for example unions as internal relevant interested parties/stakeholders. If there is an impact on the organization that went unnoticed, there could be a nonconformity but I would not be comfortable issuing action requests based only on my opinions and ideas.

 

This absolutely should not happen. Giving someone a template is consulting. Such behavior should be reported, ideally as an action item dispute if it has reached that point.

 

ISO/IEC 17021 says that someone who audits can't have consulted within (from memory) 2 years of the audit (or vice versa)

 

Andy is correct. CBs are accredited to, among other things, ISO/IEC 17021.

 

The structure of the requirements shouldn't affect the duration of the audit! Why a stage 1 is required, I have no idea. You have a system in place and it's been audited. It's incomprehensible to me that you'd have to do the whole thing over - didn't happen at the 2000 changes and, IMHO those changes were FAR greater in impact.

 

The Transition Planning Guidance document IAF ID-9:2015 is a guidance document, and as such is not the place to look for specific requirements.

That said, please see page 8, 4.2.1: "Where transition audits are carried out in conjunction with scheduled surveillance or recertification (i.e. progressive or staged approach), additional time is likely to be required to ensure that all activities are covered for the existing and new standards." See also 4.2.2 (iii). This being the case, registrars I have reviewed describe transition as being possible at the scheduled point of Surveillance, but more time may be required to ensure conformance to the revised standard throughout.

For the sake of avoiding certification gap and minimizing the risk of sending multiple auditors to a site for up to a week, only to discover a set of Majors that could disrupt the timeline, some CBs have set a process inn which preliminary reviews and calling it a Stage 1. It isn't easy to find CBs' published declarations of this process.