For buyers
What an auditor will ask, answered before they ask it.
For compliance and sourcing managers who have an obligation to discharge and a record to keep. A brief gives you the claim, the source, the date, the reviewer, and what remains to verify.
Buyer outcome
From market scan to informed engagement
- 01
Define the need
A work package, a capability, a geography, a timing. It becomes one bounded question with a stated inclusion rule.
- 02
Read the evidence
Sources, retrieval dates, verbatim excerpts, reviewer, rationale, and status for every claim — the things an auditor asks for, in the order they ask.
- 03
Plan verification
Every open claim names what would move it. That list is the pre-engagement work plan, with the citation to start each item from.
The audit question
Five questions, five places in the brief
- What did you rely on?
- The claim reference and its evidence chain, printable, with a stable URL.
- Where did it come from?
- The source class and locator, from a colophon that lists every class in scope.
- When?
- The retrieval date on each source, and the freshness window for its class.
- Who checked it?
- The named reviewer and the signed date on any Reviewed claim.
- What did you not know?
- The stated limits, recorded at publication, and the open items per record.
Independence rule
The buyer funds the question — not the answer.
Commissioning may define the geography, capability, work package, and permitted open-source set.
It does not purchase supplier inclusion, evidence status, ranking, or a favourable conclusion. Sponsorship is stated on the cover.
Stated limits
What a brief does not do for a buyer
- 01
A brief does not replace qualification, audit, or site inspection.
It tells you what can be shown from open sources and what to verify next. It does not visit facilities and does not certify anything.
- 02
A brief does not rank the register.
Sort by open items to see the verification queue. There is no ordering by merit and no composite score, by design.
- 03
Commissioning defines the question, never the answer.
A sponsor sets geography, work packages, and source scope. A sponsor cannot touch inclusion, status, or conclusions, and sponsorship is disclosed on the cover.
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