Intertek appears to have fired the entire team of former SAI Global executives thought to have been responsible for yearslong problems related to the certification body’s inability to perform audits. In addition, Oxebridge has filed a major complaint with Intertek on behalf of stakeholders, as the problems appear to continue.
Since at least 2017, SAI Global faced repeated complaints and customer reports that it was not performing audits per required schedules. This resulted in clients facing the loss of contracts as their ISO 9001 and other certifications lapsed while waiting for SAI auditors to perform routine surveillance audits. Major complaints were filed against SAI Global, which then lost its accreditation by ANAB for months, a shocking move given that major certification bodies of SAI’s stature are rarely cited for such issues. ANAB lifted the suspensions shortly after, but the problems continued.
Intertek Purchase Has No Effect
In 2021, Intertek purchased SAI Global’s ISO certification business, but the problems continued. In Australia, the problems grew so much that Intertek announced it was exiting the continent. At that time, Intertek had kept the three SAI Global executives — Peter Granat, Kim Jenkins, and Paul Johns — on staff in their prior roles, according to a now-deleted page on the former SAI website after its Intertek branding.
Intertek SAI page showing content for Kim Jenkins was removed.
In January 2023, Oxebridge reported on the ongoing problems and named the three executives in its reporting, showing how the scheduling problems appeared to begin at the same time when all three originally took on their roles with SAI.
It now appears that Intertek has terminated all three of the executives. Their names have been removed from the Intertek management page, and their individual LinkedIn profiles edited to remove all references to Intertek entirely.
The LinkedIn profile for Peter Granat, the former CEO of SAI Global, now claims he was the CEO of “SAI360” since 2017, and removes entirely his employment history at both SAI Global and Intertek. The former SAI Global organization rebranded as SAI360 in September 2021, focusing on risk management, and did not exist in 2017 as Granat’s edited profile suggests. Granat’s profile as CEO for SAI Global remains available on the Wayback Machine.
The LinkedIn profile for Kim Jenkins, the former Managing Director of Property and Knowledge, now only refers to employment at SAI Global from 2017 to 2022, and does not mention her role at Intertek at all. Instead, it indicates she was on a “sabbatical” from March to July 2022. She now works as CEO for Tricor.
Paul Johns, the prior Chief Marketing Officer for SAI Global, announced in a LinkedIn post dated July 2022 that he was taking on a position with ethiXbase. His LinkedIn profile still references SAI Global, but makes no mention of Intertek.
Based on when the references to Intertek were scrubbed from the profiles, it suggests that Intertek terminated them all in early 2022. It is not clear why for months after that date, Intertek had continued to list them as executives within Intertek, and not SAI Global.
The exit of the executive team appears to have no effect on Intertek’s ability to perform audits as scheduled, as Oxebridge clients and other companies continue to report they have been forced to fire Intertek for failing to schedule or perform audits as required.
New Complaint Filed
Now, Oxebridge has filed a major complaint with Intertek on the issue, citing three specific violations of ISO 17021-1, the standard for which Intertek is accredited. The violations related to ISO 17021 clauses regarding maintaining sufficient resources, including auditors, to perform audits as required.
Companies that lose their certificates because of Intertek’s inability to comply with audit schedules have little to no recourse within the IAF scheme, and are only likely to get compensated with potentially expensive lawsuits.
Intertek is accredited by two dozen various accreditation bodies around the world, making it nearly impossible to identify which AB may need to process an escalation, should Intertek ignore the complaint. Likewise, it would be impossible to identify which IAF regional body would have oversight over the matter, given it affects nearly every geographic area under the various IAF bodies.
IAF has known about SAI Global and Intertek’s issues for years, and has taken no action. Intertek puts tremendous revenue into the AB/IAF scheme, making the oversight bodies less likely to perform objective administration of the accreditation rules.
