Other types of design audit

Audits of practice against procedure or policy should be recorded as they are observed and you can either do this in note form to be written up later or directly onto observation forms especially designed for the purpose. Some auditors prefer to fill in the forms after the audit and others during the audit. The weakness with the former approach is that there may be some dispute as to the facts if presented some time later. It is therefore safer to get the auditee s endorsement to the facts at the time they are observed. In other types of audits there may not be an auditee present. Audits of procedure against policy can be carried out at a desk. You can check whether the documents of the quality system satisfy all the clauses of the standard at a desk without walking around the site, but you can t check whether the system is documented unless you examine the operations in practice. There may be many activities which make the system work that are not documented. 

When we design a database on accidents and near accidents, we also have to consider what other types of data we may want to store in later developments of the database. In the end, we may, for example, be interested in integrating data from accident and near-accident investigations with reports on unsafe conditions, nonconformities, workplace inspections, risk analysis and SHE audits in a common database. 

In judging the adequacy of provisions you will need to apply the relevant standards, legislation, codes of practice, and other agreed measures for the type of operation, application, and business. These activities are quality assurance activities and may be subdivided into design assurance, procurement assurance, manufacturing assurance, etc. Auditing, planning, analysis, inspection, and test are some of the techniques that may be used. 

Until very recently liquid hydrogen has been in limited supply and its use has been restricted to small quantities at any one time. The transfer of small quantities of liquid from storage dewars to the use points has been effected by pressurization of the dewar with hydrogen or helium gas or by the use of specially designed centrifugal pumps. As the use of liquid hydrogen for missiles and for other activities increases, the quantity of gas required to pressurize and transfer the liquid from a dewar becomes large audits cost and that of the pressure vessel required become important considerations in the selection of the type of transfer system to be used. 

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