You’re not even going to believe this one.
Back in 2002 or so, the going rate for ISO 9001 auditors was about $400 per day. Perry Johnson Registrars always paid less, so auditors were getting about $300 – 350. Other CBs paid around $500. For AS9100, you may have paid a bit more.
I don’t pay much attention to this since I don’t work for a CB. But recently, I’ve had reason to know this stuff and found out that they haven’t increased their auditor rates since that time. It’s over 20 years!
PJR, I’m told, still pays around $350 per day, and that’s for AS9100 auditors, not just ISO 9001. I sampled a few other well-known US certification bodies and found they all fell in the $500 – 600 range. Now, keep in mind they are charging you (the certified company) $1500 – 2000 per day. So, the CB keeps the bulk of the money, even though all the CB does is process the report and have it reviewed by a review committee. Those review committees are typically populated by salaried staff (they are already paid for) or volunteer advisors. One CB I know had their “reviewer” check reports in bulk every two weeks at a Dunkin Donuts, and they paid him in — wait for it — donuts. I’m not kidding.
So there’s not that much overhead that they need to rob their auditors to this extent.
It gets worse: auditors are not paid for travel time or any report processing time that might happen after the audit. Every auditor loses two more days of work for every gig: the day before the audit and the day after. Those are days they are not paid for, and they can’t bill for. This is why so many auditors try to get out early on the last day and fly out; they don’t want to lose an entire day on the tail end.
Imagine: if auditor rates haven’t gone up in twenty years — while the price of bread and milk has skyrocketed — it means you are left with the bottom of the barrel regarding auditor quality. Professional experts are not going to go anywhere near an auditing job since they’d be better off working at a Wal-Mart.
At the same time, dummies at the IAQG and CASCO are increasing the auditor competency requirements. It’s like a bad LinkedIn recruiter post: they want genius-level experts with a thousand years’ experience, and then only want to pay them minimum wage. It’s capitalism on crack.
The industry needs a reckoning. The big CBs are out of control. They ignore ISO 17021-1 with impunity, they break laws, they rubber-stamp certifications, and now we find out they are robbing their clients by charging them fees that don’t even go to their auditors. This results in poor auditor quality, weak audits, and “everyone wins” problem that undermines the credibility of certifications.
I am usually advocating for lower costs. I think standards should be free, for example. But in this case, I will reverse course. CBs should be paying their auditors more. If they want to continue to rape their clients by adding unreasonable overhead fees, I guess they can, and let the market decide who survives. But maybe companies should pay more for ISO and AS certifications so we can stop this rubber-stamping of companies that don’t deserve it in the first place.
But if you don’t respect your auditors, then don’t complain later when your clients get poached.
UPDATE 30 November 2024: I posted this article on LinkedIn and asked folks to tell me if they are seeing similar rates, or I have just been unlucky with my sampling. It does seem to be a genuine problem.
One LinkedIn user said he researched CB auditor rates back in 2004, in the UK, and was given a rate of £350. He then checked again in 2023 (19 years later) and was quoted £400 per day.
Another reader said, “Only a couple of weeks ago, I saw a global CB advertising for auditors and offering nearly £24,000 [per year] around £12.80 / hr or around £1 over national minimum wage.”
Another reader wrote, “In Australia, auditors are paid from around $800 to $1100 a day, while clients are charged from $1800-$2200 a day (AUD), with higher averages for more technical standards.” $800 in Australian dollars equals $520 US dollars.
And yet another reader wrote, ‘The same has occurred in France for the last 20 years. The average auditor pay seems to be 400 – 600 € depending on auditor expierience, type of company and type of standards. CBs are charging approx. 1200 € per day.“
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 30 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
