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How much does a GMA-SAFE
assessment cost?
The invoice
you receive from GMA-SAFE shall incorporate all costs
associated with your company’s GMA-SAFE Assessment. GMA-SAFE
is now responsible to collect all line items within the
GMA-SAFE invoice and then make payments to the entity
that has performed the work. GMA-SAFE has reduced its
fee down from $1000, to $750 for the Food Protection,
Aseptic, Spice and Dairy Assessments. The Assessment
Fee has been established by GMA-SAFE for all Assessment
and is billed at an hourly rate of $160/hr (based on the
average cost of assessments performed in 2008). Upon the
supplier’s receipt of the GMA-SAFE bid, the auditor’s
travel and expense will only be an estimate of the
travel costs. The supplier shall be billed the exact
T&E determined by the receipts the auditor provided to
GMA-SAFE. The Express, Packaging and Warehouse
Assessments’ GMA-SAFE fee is $495.
What makes the GMA-SAFE
assessment better than other assessments in the
industry?
For the first time, the food industry's leading
companies have reached a consensus through GMA to
establish a standard, high-quality food safety/food
protection systems assessment. Instead of each company
relying on or imposing its own assessment and assessment
checklist on suppliers, these companies have agreed to a
single, comprehensive assessment that is widely accepted
across the industry. As a result, a single GMA-SAFE
assessment will satisfy the assessment requirements of
several customers, eliminating the need for costly,
disruptive, and often duplicative assessments. The SAFE
assessment allows a facility to describe what they are
actually doing, rather than be scored by compliance to
an arbitrary set of quality indicators. The SAFE
assessment is flexible: a facility can always add
information that they know their customers will be
interested in. Moreover, SAFE provides access to over
230 certified Auditors around the world, with a broader
range of food industry expertise than is available in
any one-assessment company.
How long is a GMA-SAFE
assessment good for?
Although the GMA-SAFE
assessment was designed as a yearly assessment, each
user of the GMA-SAFE assessment determines the time
lapse between each assessment. Some have determined
yearly, some have determined every two years and some,
every three years. The Express assessment was created
by GMA-SAFE to be an off-year assessment to fill the gap
between the GMA-SAFE full assessments.
What are the SAFE
Assessment requirements?
What do I need to pass
the assessment?
A fundamental difference about the SAFE assessment is
that there are no SAFE requirements, other than the
facility is not producing adulterated or regulatory-violative
product. We have found that what is a requirement for
one customer is negotiable or even not important to
another. The GMA-SAFE Contract Auditor reviews your
policies and procedures and your actual practices, and
provides that information in the report as an objective
"virtual tour" of your quality/food protection systems.
The Contract Auditor also provides his/her opinion, or
"judgment", of the overall effectiveness of each system.
Then it is left for your customers to read the report
and determine for themselves whether your quality
systems meet their expectations.
Is SAFE a scored
assessment? How is this score determined?
GMA-SAFE believes that the strength of its assessment is
in the auditor's narrative of objective observations,
not in a score that is inherently subjective, so GMA-SAFE
and GMA-SAFE Contract Auditors do not score the
assessments. However, while the GMA-SAFE Program does
not advocate using scores to rate a supplier, we
recognize that some customers must have a score to begin
its review process. Therefore, a "scoring" option is
available that allows customers of the assessment to
assign values to the auditor's judgments and calculates
a "Score" based on weights the Customer assigned.
Another option available to customers is the use of
customized scoring templates created by SAFE to
determine industry averages. Every customer using the
scoring option must decide for themselves the score that
constitutes a "pass" or "fail".
How long does a SAFE
assessment take?
SAFE is not a typical, superficial assessment. Rather
than inspecting for quality system indicators, SAFE
auditors will learn your policies and procedures,
investigate your actual practices and compliance, and
assess the apparent effectiveness of those programs. GMA-SAFE
determined a minimum amount of time be established for a
Universal Food Protection Assessment. This amount of
time has been set at 32 in-plant hours. This allows the
auditor enough time to collect the information needed to
provide readers the comprehensive report they desire.
SAFE has also established a minimum of 16 in-plant hours
for the Express Assessment. GMA-SAFE has determined a
minimum of 16 hours for the Universal Food Protection
Packaging Assessments and 12 hours for the Universal
Food Protection Warehouse and Distribution Center
Assessments.
How do I request an
assessment?
The assessment request process is done entirely online.
You can start the assessment process by visiting our
public web page at
www.gma-safe.org; or if
you are repeating the assessment process go to
http://www.fpa-safe.net/safe.htm,
which will take you to your company’s secure web page
where you can request a new assessment. The bids are
competitive and GMA-SAFE responds directly to you with
the Contract Auditor’s proposal via the secure website.
After entering in your facility information, you will be
emailed a username and password, which allows you to
enter your personal homepage at
http://www.fpa-safe.net/safe.htm.
From this page, you can view all incoming assessment
proposals, and accept the one you want. In addition,
this site is where you will manage and track your
assessment as it is completed. More detailed are
available from the Supplier webpage.
When should I request an
assessment?
A SAFE assessment can be requested for next week or next
year, it will depend on the availability of the Contract
Auditor. Requested assessment dates should not coincide
with significant construction projects that could hamper
the assessment process and the plant must be making
product during the assessment. Please note that the
presence of key plant individuals in the following
departments will be critical for a complete assessment;
e.g., Quality, Human Resources, Sanitation,
Production/Operations, Engineering and Maintenance.
How do I select a
Contract Auditor?
At the Supplier webpage (http://www.fpa-safe.net/auditorlist.htm),
or during the Request an Assessment process, you will
see the list of 230+ SAFE-certified auditors. All
Contract auditors have demonstrated a high caliber of
auditing and report writing skills necessary to be a
SAFE-certified auditor. The Contract Auditor list can be
searched using a multi-level search engine which is set
up to look for an individual with: 1) a particular
expertise, 2) by location of the auditor (US and / or
International), 3) by auditor’s name 4) by Contract
Auditor that is an audit company name and 5) by language
skill. From your search criteria, a list of auditors’
names shall appear. Each auditor's name is a hyperlink,
taking you to a window that provides more information
about the Contract Auditor, including contact
information. Your SAFE assessment is an investment; if
you aren't sure who you want to perform your assessment,
we recommend that you contact and interview the Contract
Auditors of interest, to ensure they will meet your
needs.
I put in my assessment
request, but now want to send it to more auditors. How
do I do this?
Once an assessment request has been submitted, it cannot
be revised to add more auditors to the potential auditor
base. The best way to send your request to more auditors
is to send out a new request that encompasses the other
auditors you want to have bid on the assessment. The
original request can then be deleted; to do this please
contact Jill Gerken at 708-995-5682. |
