the iso 22000 project plan

Determining your project goals
In order to start planning, you will need to determine what your goals are for the project. Answer these questions:

• When will you start your project?
• When does your company want to have an ISO 22000 certificate in hand?

The answer to these questions will determine your timeline. The shorter time frame allowed for the project, the more resources the project will demand during implementation. It is important to know what your goal is because other dates will be determined by this information.

Find out if there are company goals, are there clients that are requesting certification or other circumstances that will determine the date? Your date may be revised later. You will use this as a target date, and as we move along to assigning teams and creating the tasks lists you will be able to determine if the date is realistic. It will depend on what you currently have in place for your quality system, and how many resources you have available for the project.

identify responsibilities
It is important to determine who will be leading this project. Are you the person leading the charge?

If so, you would be the project manager. You will need to clarify who makes up "Top Management". The standard has requirements to be fulfilled by Top Management, and the sooner they are involved in this project the better.

• Who is your project manager?
• Who makes up Top Management at your organization?
• Who should be on the ISO 22000 Steering Team?

This team will play an important role in planning, coordinating and providing resources for the ISO 22000 project. What is the ISO 22000 Steering Team?

create a project timeline
The ISO Steering Team will assign task teams and a food safety team leader, and prepare a Gantt chart identifying the timeline for the teams.

plan a date for employee training
You will want your employees to be aware of the project, what will need to be done, who will be involved, and why you are implementing ISO 9001:2000. Choose a date that is after the planning meeting discussed above. That way you can decide if some people that will be involved in the project need more detailed training, and you can let employees know who will be working on the project.

Complete employee training before the Task Team meetings so individuals involved in the task groups are trained before their first meeting. Use Introduction to ISO 22000 to conduct a group training or Introduction to ISO 22000 CD to have employees complete the training individually.