This document has been made available by the Infrastructure Health and Safety Association (IHSA) and AuditSoft. It is a guide for IHSA internal auditors and associate (external) auditors for the use of AuditSoft to complete an Ontario IHSA COR™ 2020 audit of a registered IHSA organization.

This document should be referenced in conjunction with the COR™ 2020 Handbook that can be downloaded from the IHSA website (https://ihsa.ca)

Before you begin the COR™ 2020 audit process, here are a few things to consider or verify:

Senior management must ensure that the designated Auditor(s) complete the AuditSoft audit and supporting documents within the timeframes set out in the COR™ 2020 Program Guideline. The COR™ 2020 AuditSoft process consists of the following phases:

First, Download AuditSoft and create your account by following the instrustions in this article: Getting Started with AuditSoft.

A license is required for every audit that is started.

To obtain a license:

1. Click Get New License.

2. Select the Ontario - IHSA - COR 2020 Audit License from the list of available audits.

3. Enter the Legal name of the company to be audited.

4. Click Purchase to be taken to a payment portal where you can enter your payment information.

You will be returned to the AuditSoft Home page, and the requested license will be listed on the left side of the page under the Start a new audit column.

Once the AuditSoft License has been approved you can:

5. Click on the license name under the Start a new audit column.

6. This will open a new audit and the audit Instructions page will be displayed. Read the instructions.

7. Before you proceed:

The IHSA COR™ 2020 audit consists of 14 elements. Each element has a similar structure with questions covering each of the following:

A policy is defined as a general commitment, direction or intention and is formally stated by top management. An effective policy statement expresses top management's commitment to the implementation and improvement of its management system.

Each element must have a policy statement that is dated and signed by the owner/CEO. It demonstrates management’s commitment to providing the time, budget and resources needed to effectively implement the element.

The policy statement may be a few sentences or longer depending on the element.

A procedure is defined as a documented, specified method for completing an activity.

The second question in each element relates to procedure. It specifies all the requirements that must be included in the written procedure. A copy of the written procedure must be attached to your audit as proof for review.

Implementation questions seek to identify evidence that the element is in place and working as defined in the procedure. Evidence of implementation can be verified through review of documentation, interviews of managers/workers and/or observations of the workplace. This evidence must demonstrate that the organization is conducting element activities as specified in the procedure for that element.

The last question for each element relates to the maintenance of documents and records related to the procedure, where:

As part of the OHSMS, the organization shall establish, implement, monitor, and maintain procedures to specify which documents and records will be used and maintained.

Documentation

Documentation includes documents and records required by the COR™ 2020 Program and determined by the organization to be necessary for maintaining an effective OHSMS.

The creation, collection, retention and distribution of documents and records must comply with all applicable legal requirements, collective agreements, and organizational policies.

The audit requires review of documentation, interviews of representatives of management/workers and the observation of work in progress.

The time taken to complete an audit depends on the size and diversity of activities and sites visited during the audit. Allocate enough time during the interview stage to spend approximately 30 minutes per interview. Depending on where the employees are located and their availability, additional time may be needed.

Preparation for the audit includes:

Use the checklist below to help ensure that you have covered all pre-audit steps.

If, while completing the internal audit you identify a performance gap in the OHSMS that will result in a failing audit score, you must act by creating and implementing a corrective action plan prior to completing the audit and submitting it to IHSA for review.

Now that you have completed the AuditSoft Application Overview Online training and you have started a new audit we can proceed.

This section lists the details of the company or organization that is being audited. Companies often merge or are acquired and AuditSoft supports these changes in business structure:

An audit is a snapshot that represents the state of a company’s OHSMS at a specific point in time. To ensure that the audit is completed in a timely matter, to capture the snapshot, guidance is provided to auditors. Guidance on the recommended amount of time that the audit should take is based on best practices and it is NOT a rule.

To remind the auditor of this guidance:

After the Audit Information section has been completed, with a green check mark next to each subsection, it is time to move to the next section of the audit.

An important part of audit planning is determining which site(s) to visit, how many interviews to do, and the number of observation tours to complete.

The worksites included in the audit must be representative of the overall organization operations. To determine the number of worksites to visit the IHSA Worksite Observations Guidelines table has been incorporated and AuditSoft automatically calculates the number of sites to include based on the active sites entered. In addition to these active sites the head office / main office / shop visit must be included in the scope of the audit.

When updating this Site Sampling Summary page:

4. After the number of employees has been entered, the minimum number of interviews is calculated based on the IHSA Audit Interview Ratio Table that has been incorporated within AuditSoft. The auditor may determine that additional interviews are required based on the organization size and diversity of work – see Interview Planning below.

Next select which sites will be included in the audit. To be included means that you will perform at least one evidence gathering activity at the site. There are 3 evidence gathering methods:

D - Documentation review.

I - conducting employee Interviews.

O - completing and Observation tour.

5. Always include the head office in the audit. In most cases you will want to complete all 3 evidence gathering steps (DIO) at the head office.

6. At other site(s) you may or may not include a documentation review (more about this in the Review Documentation section), interviews and/or observations based on the setup of the audits and whether you will physically or virtually visit the site.

Interview planning ensures that you select a representative sample of employees to interview. If the auditor determines that additional interviews are required based on organization size and diversity of work the planned number of interviews can be adjusted:

After the Scope section has been completed, with a green check mark next to each subsection, it is time to move to the next section of the audit.

When gathering evidence, it is standard audit practice to visit one site at a time. At each visited site you may decide to complete any, or all, of the following evidence gathering steps:

With the use of technology and specifically online document repositories (Dropbox, SharePoint, etc.) and video conferencing tools (Zoom, Teams, etc.) some of the documentation review and interview tasks can often be completed remotely or from a single location.

When you start an audit, it is a best practice to start with a documentation review at the head office. Depending on the documentation available at the head office you may not have to review documentation at other sites. During the documentation review there are generally two types of documents that are encountered:

The document review involves:

Additional documents required for verification may include but are not limited to:

To start the documentation review at the head office:

All documentation review questions should be answered at the Head office.

The only questions that do not need to be answered are those optional questions that may not be applicable and that can be marked as Question is not applicable to this audit.

On the documentation review page all the questions that must be verified by documentation review are listed. There is additional information on this page to provide guidance on what the auditor should be looking for.

2. Click on the More / Less link under each question to expand or collapse the question guidelines.

3. There is an information icon (a question mark) next to many questions.

4. Clicking on the icon opens an Auditor Guidelines pop-up that provides further guidance on how and what to look for when responding to the question.

5. Internal auditors are required to provide proof. In your supporting documents you must first highlight the appropriate sections of the document that pertain to a question BEFORE you click Add Attachment. Attach no more than three (3) consecutive samples of evidence to the audit. When attaching documents ensure that you also specify the page and/or paragraph of the attached document that relates to the question in addition to highlighting the section before attaching the document.

When recording the response to a documentation question there are 2 different response formats. The type of response required for each question is defined by IHSA. They are:

6. Yes (100%) or No (0%) – where “yes” means that the documentation reviewed is 100% compliant with the audit expectations.

7. Evidence Sampling – In this instance the auditor looks at a sample of data and then records the number of items in the sample that met the audit requirements. This is then used to calculate the % Compliant. For example:

8. Legislated questions are indicated with red text in the questions guidelines. Achieving 100% compliance on every legislated is required to pass the audit.

Reviewing documents at Other Site(s)

At the start of the Review Documentation section the differences between directive and operational documents were discussed. If all the operational documents required for the audit were not available at the head office for review, it may be necessary to review only those operational documents that were not available as part of a documentation review at other site(s).

2. At the site questions related to directive documents, that have already been reviewed at the head office, can be ignored and can either be:

3. Questions related to operational documents that are specific to the site, and that could not be reviewed at the head office, like site specific emergency response plans should be answered.

After confirming the existence of the required documentation, the next step is to verify how well the health and safety system is communicated to employees. This is accomplished by interviews to determine if employees were included in the development of the program and to gauge their understanding of the OHSMS, procedures and policies.

Representatives of both management and workers will be interviewed to verify specific audit questions. The auditor will determine whether the interviewee provides a positive or negative response. If an interviewee is unwilling to provide a response to an interview question it can be marked as no comment, which is treated as a negative response.

Some items to keep in mind during Interview Planning and when selecting employees to interview:

Start an Interview

In AuditSoft navigate to Conduct Interviews within the Gather Evidence section on the left navigation menu:

1. Select the position of the person that you are interviewing at the site where they work.

2. Then select Start.

The Interview page will open and list only those questions that are applicable to the position of the interviewee that was selected.

3.. When recording interviewee responses, it is a good practice to record the interviewee’s title so that you can easily return to a specific completed interviewee’s responses later.

4. The Interviews can be responded to with the following four options

The final evidence gathering step is to complete a tour of the site(s) that were visited and to record observations. The purpose of conducting observations is to verify the information gathered during the documentation review and the interviews, and to get a sense of the overall level of compliance with the standards and company policies and procedures.

Specifically, the auditor is visually confirming whether the workers are following procedures and/or whether the workplace/site conforms to the legal and organization OHSMS requirements.

Record an Observation Tour

In AuditSoft navigate to Record Observations within Gather Evidence section on the left navigation menu and enter your detailed observation notes for each site toured.

The evidence gathering steps represent the bulk of work in any audit and after completion the Gather Evidence section in the navigation menu will be marked with a green check mark next to each subsection. It is now time to move to the next section of the audit.

The Audit Result section is where we draft the final audit responses as they will appear in the report. Any notes that were recorded during the Evidence Gathering steps can be accessed and referenced to formulate the final audit response for each question.

The findings and auditor notes presented in this section must be detailed enough for the organization to address gaps identified in their OHSMS.

Audit Results contains 14 elements and three sub-elements, and each has several questions. When answering each question, it is important to keep the content separate and to not duplicate content. In general, there are three (3) text areas per question for recording:

In the Findings and notes section include:

Every audit question is verified during the Evidence Gathering process by appropriate documentation, interview and/or observations and assigning a % Compliant for each verification method used.

The % Compliant assigned to each question is automatically converted into question scores through one of 12 IHSA scoring rules.

Minimum Scores for passing an IHSA COR™ 2020 audit are:

After answering every question in the Audit Results section, it will be marked with a green check mark next to each element and sub element. It is now time to move to the next section of the audit.

The final section of the audit to complete is the (1) Summary information section. This section is an accumulation of supporting documents and attachments that must be provided as part of the audit submission. Each sub-section may include:

After completing this section, the report will contain the following content to be presented in the post-audit meeting:

After completing this section your audit has been completed and all the sections in the navigation menu in the left should have a green check mark next to it. It is now time to move to the final section and to submit your audit for quality assurance review.

You are now ready to review your audit before submitting it:

When you have reviewed the draft and you are ready to submit it to IHSA:

2. Select Submit from the left navigation menu.

3. Confirm that there are not any incomplete sections in your audit. If there are, click on the link(s) to add additional content and then return to this section.

4. Click Send to submit your audit to IHSA for review.

For questions related to the content of the audit, for example:

Please reach out to IHSA, the authors of the COR™ 2020 audit standard, for clarification. They can be reached:

AuditSoft is a software company that implemented the questions set and guidelines as they were provided by IHSA. AuditSoft cannot change questions, scoring rules, the configuration, or the report and/or wording independent from approval by IHSA.

If you have a question about how the AuditSoft software application works, there is an extensive online manual including many frequently asked question (FAQ) responses that can be accessed at:

Or if you require software support, please contact AuditSoft at:

AuditSoft has implemented automatic calculation and scoring algorithms to simplify the completion of the audit. Each audit question is configured with specific automatic scoring rules that are imbedded within the audit.

The following audit scoring rules have been implemented for IHSA: