Site Location and Premises
The plants property is divided into two sections. We have the plant itself on one half and the other half is a maintenance building and storage area for all sorts of things. For example we have some vehicles, vehicle parts, construction materials, pallets of cardboard waiting for pick-up, another building not finished yet, etc., etc., We are a very small plant trying to grow with limited funds. Wanted to put a fence up to seperate the two parts of the property but not sure the funds are available. How much of a ding would this be for the audit?
So, basically you want to know if you can cordon off half the property that has the maintenance and debris building and some other partially finished building and if I get what you are eluding too, you want to tell the Auditor that we are just on this side of the fence and that's all you need to see.
The Auditor (I was an Auditor and this did come up several times in my travels) will say, OK, but the site plan that I looked at shows this and this size property and that includes that area and is that the maintenance building that services this side of the property and I need to check that building - if pressed and you won't allow the inspection I'd say you would see a MAJOR ding (as you call it.)
I was assigned a very large sugar company and they fenced off 1/3 of the property, an old building and interestingly enough a maintenance building and a storage building - they told me these were not part of the inspection - I said let's see your site plan again, and said, nope I need to see everything - they refused, said they were going to complain about me, I said sure, here's the director of QA's office number - they failed the audit, the director got the call and both of us returned for the re-audit a month later - the director sided with me and after seeing what was actually on the other side of the fence they changed suppliers.
This is what I was expecting. Gonna have to figure this out somehow then I guess. Don't want to BS our way through the Audit. We want to, with the best of our abilities, comply with SQF.
I don't think it'll be too big of an issue. I talk often about my first job, spice plant with a sister sterilization company in a strip of warehouse suites. Our maintenance guy's shack was at the end in an open lot that the owners had rented. The lot itself was a disaster: miniature junk yard with trailers, their own RV's, couple broke down cars, old equipment of various types, pallet racking, you get the picture. I didn't show the lot or the maintenance guy's shack on the facility maps, but the auditors would always ask to go see the shack and it's 100% within their purview to ask. They namely looked for unauthorized chemicals and to ensure we had food grade/non food grade chemical separation. And heck, sometimes our maintenance guy would even take down his girly calendars and hide his booze for the audit too.
To their credit, owners did keep the area free from weeds that would've concerned an auditor, and for all the stuff that was out in that lot it was kept pretty orderly. Auditors always eyed the area carefully but couldn't find any fault in us working with the space we had available.
I don't think it'll be too big of an issue. I talk often about my first job, spice plant with a sister sterilization company in a strip of warehouse suites. Our maintenance guy's shack was at the end in an open lot that the owners had rented. The lot itself was a disaster: miniature junk yard with trailers, their own RV's, couple broke down cars, old equipment of various types, pallet racking, you get the picture. I didn't show the lot or the maintenance guy's shack on the facility maps, but the auditors would always ask to go see the shack and it's 100% within their purview to ask. They namely looked for unauthorized chemicals and to ensure we had food grade/non food grade chemical separation. And heck, sometimes our maintenance guy would even take down his girly calendars and hide his booze for the audit too.
To their credit, owners did keep the area free from weeds that would've concerned an auditor, and for all the stuff that was out in that lot it was kept pretty orderly. Auditors always eyed the area carefully but couldn't find any fault in us working with the space we had available.
our auditor would have a field day with that kind of space! We have some concrete forms 4 feet away from the building waiting for the next phase of a project and we had to "discuss" that for 15 minutes
The plants property is divided into two sections. We have the plant itself on one half and the other half is a maintenance building and storage area for all sorts of things. For example we have some vehicles, vehicle parts, construction materials, pallets of cardboard waiting for pick-up, another building not finished yet, etc., etc., We are a very small plant trying to grow with limited funds. Wanted to put a fence up to seperate the two parts of the property but not sure the funds are available. How much of a ding would this be for the audit?
I think you'll be okay during the audit.
I would just do a documented risk analysis of the maintenance building, property layout, etc. and identify if there are significant risks to your plant (and product) based on that. Document traffic and material flow as well.
If materials for the plant are kept in the maintenance building, make sure your maintenance program includes cleaning and sanitation of materials taken outside of the plant.
Depending on your manufacturing process and if your product is low- or high-risk, this might be smooth & easy or a huge pain-in-the-butt.
Trying to fence off part of the property would raise more red flags than not.
The plants property is divided into two sections. We have the plant itself on one half and the other half is a maintenance building and storage area for all sorts of things. For example we have some vehicles, vehicle parts, construction materials, pallets of cardboard waiting for pick-up, another building not finished yet, etc., etc., We are a very small plant trying to grow with limited funds. Wanted to put a fence up to seperate the two parts of the property but not sure the funds are available. How much of a ding would this be for the audit?
How much of a separation are we talking about?
Do you have a protocol for inspecting or sanitizing materials coming to the production facility from the maintenance area?
We have a couple separate grounds / maintenance buildings, but the segregation is very clear, and they're over 100ft from the production buildings. None of our inspectors have ever bothered to look inside them.
Man we have an old building a hundred yards or so from our facility, and another small building the owner uses to store his boat, etc. Fence separates them from our facility.
Not one auditor has ever mentioned it in 15 years.......