IAAC Lead peer evaluator’s experience on an IAAC remote peer evaluation in 2021

I (IAAC Team Leader) want to reiterate that the experiences that the evaluation team has for the remote evaluation of the AB was very good.  EVALUATOR01 was working from Asia and EVALUATOR02 was working from Colombia.  While we were all on our own time zones, the team adjusted their work on the evaluation to the eastern time zone for AB staff.  The laboratory onsite witnessing was also seamless, even with their time differences.  Thankfully for each of us the web services and the virtual modality was pretty stable and seamless.  My own experience of the lab witnessing was outstanding.  The assessor and the laboratory staff did an excellent job, even when moving from one venue to another.  We were able to see all the equipment and the laboratory records, using snapshots and screen grabs – just as an example to share with you on the techniques that they used. As for the evaluator experiences with interviewing the AB staff and managements, the web modality worked great.  Most of us are already in this type of work mode and very experienced.  It was also helpful for the evaluation team that the AB arranged for hosting on the MS Teams platform and the Zoom platform for most of our meetings with them.  Communication and intentions for the schedule were updated daily and we gave plenty of updates along the way regarding what we were still needing to cover vs what we did cover the previous days.  Also we kept the AB’s management team up to date on any potential findings along the way.  These details, seem so easy to implement but apparently these do not always happen in practice.  I am proud of the evaluation team for AB I know we did a thorough evaluation, we didn’t take any short cuts.  If anything, the virtual modality and the timeframe allowed us to go a little deeper since we weren’t traveling to the witness labs, we had more time to focus on the procedures and records (maybe to the chagrin of the AIHA-LAP).  But I have to say, now that I have something else, another evaluation to perhaps compare it to, I am super proud of the work we did on this evaluation (everyone involved).