The audit schedule should be produced annually and include all audits which must be conducted during the year.

All elements of the QMS must be addressed in the schedule but these elements do not need to be examined in every laboratory.

The frequency of audits is left to the judgement of the Quality Manager; neither ISO 9000 nor ISO 17025 specify how often audits are conducted. Audits should be scheduled ‘on the basis of importance and status’ which means that critical areas which will affect the quality of your test result should be visited more frequently than those activities of less importance. Remember, not all of the element of the QMS have equal impact on the quality of a test result.