IPSA Surveillance Audit Service
When you have implemented your QMS and are having your first certification, you will start with a documentation audit. This is where IPSA will review all of your documentation, and compare it to the ISO 9001:2015 standard requirements, to verify that what you have documented meets the requirements of the standard.
Once the documentation is confirmed, you will schedule your certification audit. This is where the IPSA will perform an on-site audit of all of your QMS processes, and then issue your ISO 9001:2015 certification (when you have completely addressed any corrective actions that were found).
You will then have on-site surveillance audits for the next two years, until your re-certification audit on the third year of your cycle, which will start you into the next three-year cycle.
Below is a graphic of how this works, with the link back to the surveillance audit after the re-certification. As long as you are maintaining your current certification with the IPSA, you will not need to go back to the certification audit. However, if you change certification bodies from other citification body to IPSA or your version of the ISO 9001 standard (as companies are now changing from ISO 9001:2008 to ISO 9001:2015), you will then have a transfer audit. This is much like starting back at the certification audit step, where a full audit is performed and then old certificates are withdrawn and new certificates are issued.