Product manufacturers going through the certification process with GECA need to go through an auditing process, where external third-party auditors make sure their products conform to all the criteria of the relevant standard. Depending on the length of the standard and how many products are being certified, this can take some time – or with a little extra preparation, it can go much faster.
In the case of Clean Plus Chemicals, the audit process took just three weeks. The cleaning and hygiene products manufacturer has a total of nine products certified under GECA’s Cleaning Products and Personal Care Products standards.
So what helped their audit go so smoothly?
Dhaval Thakkar, Business Development Manager for Clean Plus Chemicals, says that preparing for the audits ahead of time helped to speed up the process. “We read through both of the standards very thoroughly to check that our products met all the criteria, and made sure we had all the documents ready,” he said. “Whenever we had a question, the auditors were always able to give us very straightforward answers.”
The audits were conducted by BSI, who cited the good teamwork between auditor, client, and GECA as being a key factor in “fast-tracking” the audit. BSI were able to respond within two days of receiving an enquiry from Clean Plus Chemicals, and were also able to offer optional GECA training to quickly provide an understanding of the certification process.
Sriraam Tadipatri, Business Development Manager for BSI, said the GECA audits were straight forward and easy. “Once BSI’s flexibility in conducting the audits at short intervals was put in use, we got the audits conducted within 10 days of their GECA training,” he said.
GECA standards are freely available to download from this website, and most standards come with a useful checklist at the end to help new licensees prepare for their audit.
