Do You Need Technical Internal Verifiers?
This is a question that we are often asked, and it is an important question.
Everyone recognises that assessors need to be technically competent before they can carry out assessment, otherwise how do they know what they are assessing.
In reality ,it is a similar situation with internal verifiers, however, not every internal verifier in your internal verification team needs to be technically competent.
As you can see in the table below, technical verifiers are going to be in a better position to judge whether the evidence provided meets the three criteria of real, relevant and reliable.
| Non-Technical Verifier | Technical Verifier | |
|---|---|---|
| Real? | ✓ | ✓ |
| Relevant? | ? | ✓ |
| Reliable and Robust? | ✖ | ✓ |
This is critical in ensuring that the assessors are carrying out assessments satisfactorily and that your assessment system or competency management system is robust.
However, in reality, technical verifiers may not always be the best people to run your overall verification approach, ensuring that the agreed approach is being followed, documented correctly. and happening on time and as it should.
The people who can carry out a technical internal verifier role may simply not have the time to also be running the overall verification process or equally, they may be very strong technically but do not have the additional competencies needed to keep the internal verification approach working smoothly.
This is where you have the opportunity to divide the internal verifier role between those in a technical role with the responsibilities that brings and those in a non-technical verifier role, who can not verify the technical competence and appropriateness of the assessment but can keep the overall internal verification approach prioritised, on track and integral to your competency management system or assessment approach.
In our experience, organisations that split these responsibilities, are better able to keep the technical and non-technical aspects on track while not overwhelming any of their internal verification team at the same time.
