What happens to surveillance after you transfer an ISO certificate?

Surveillance continues after a transfer. The new certificate sits in the cycle you were already in. The next visit is the surveillance, or the recertification, that the programme already called for. The logo can change. The visit remains due.

Who sets the next date?

The pre-transfer review reads the programme the current body was running and carries forward the visits still due. The written offer should name that next date, or the window it falls in. If the last surveillance was recent and clean, the next one stays where it was. If it is due now, the transfer and that visit may need to be one piece of work, so the programme does not slip overdue while the file moves.

An overdue surveillance is a reason the job stops being called a transfer. Settle the date in the offer, before the old contract is cancelled. The review checklist is in what a pre-transfer review checks. How the expiry date is carried is in the expiry date.

What does the visit look like?

It looks like any other surveillance. The auditor samples live work and checks that the controls seen at the last audit are still in use. A finding is still a finding. The months after a transfer are not a grace period. Where several standards share the arrangement, each surveillance cycle should touch each system. That expectation is the one in after the certificate.

On a multi-site scope, sampling continues across the sites. The head office does not become the only place anyone visits because the transfer was agreed there. See multi-site transfers.

Who visits, and who holds the certificate?

IAF Consultancy carries out the surveillance visits. SMG remains the body that issued the certificate and that decides if a visit raises a finding serious enough to affect it. The difficult visit does not get handed back to the body you left.

The application is where this starts. Choose Transfer from another body, and include the date of the last audit in the scope notes. The offer then shows the review, the next visit, and the price, so the years after the move are visible before you sign.