Compliance audits
Compliance audits for existing products
A range that is already selling, built over years, with evidence spread across drives and inboxes. An audit establishes what is genuinely compliant, what is exposed, and what to fix first — as a register you can act on.
For products already on the market
Most compliance work is done before launch. This is the other case: a range that is already selling, built over years, by people who may no longer be at the business, with evidence spread across drives and inboxes and no single view of what is actually supported.
An audit answers three questions. What is genuinely compliant. What is exposed, and how badly. What to do first.
What an audit covers
- Portfolio inventory. Every model actually being supplied, including the variants that were never formally added.
- Scope and classification per product, against current requirements rather than the ones in force when it launched.
- Evidence status. Whether test reports and certificates exist, are current, cite the standard edition in force, and match the model shipped.
- Registration status. EESS equipment registrations, Responsible Supplier registration, GEMS registration and any scheme listings.
- Labelling and marking against what is actually on the product now, not what the artwork file says.
- Documentation and records. Technical files, declarations of conformity, and whether you could produce them on request.
- Supplier documentation quality, and whether change control would catch an undisclosed component substitution.
- Systemic causes. Individual gaps usually share a root — no owner, no intake checklist, no renewal calendar.
What you receive
A product register with a compliance status and risk rating against each line, a written report explaining the findings and distinguishing clear failures from arguable positions, and a remediation plan sequenced by exposure rather than by ease. Where the audit identifies process failures, recommendations for the checks that would prevent recurrence.
Common reasons clients commission one
- Acquisition or investment due diligence, on either side of the deal
- A new compliance owner inheriting a portfolio they did not build
- A retailer, distributor or tender requiring evidence across a range
- An incident, complaint or regulator contact on one product raising questions about the rest
- A standard being superseded across a category
- A change of supplier, factory or contract manufacturer
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from an RCM compliance review?
Scale and purpose. An RCM compliance review examines one product, or a small family, in depth. An audit works across a whole range or portfolio: it establishes status product by product, finds the systemic causes behind the individual gaps, and produces a register you can work from and hand to a board, a buyer or an insurer.
We are acquiring a business. Can you do compliance due diligence?
Yes, and it is one of the most common reasons we are engaged. Product compliance liabilities transfer with a range and are easy to miss in a financial diligence process. We assess what is registered, what evidence exists, what would not survive scrutiny, and what remediation would cost — in time to affect the price or the warranties.
What if the audit finds serious problems?
Then you know, which is the point. We set out the exposure honestly, distinguish clear non-conformity from matters of interpretation, and give you a prioritised plan rather than a list of everything at once. Where an issue is serious enough to raise recall or notification questions, we say so plainly and can support that work separately.
Do you audit our suppliers too?
Yes. Much of what goes wrong originates upstream — documentation that does not match the shipped product, undisclosed component changes, certificates for a variant you do not actually buy. We assess supplier documentation quality and can set up the intake checks that stop it recurring.
Want to learn more?
Speak to a Chartered Professional Engineer about your product, your target market and the approval pathway that actually applies to it.
Talk to an engineer
Inherited a portfolio you are not confident in?
An audit turns an unknown into a register with a status against every line, and a plan sequenced by exposure.