Published 31 Jan 2023
What is a Project Audit?
A project audit is an assessment of a project’s status against predefined success criteria and helps uncover issues and opportunities for existing and future projects. It is commonly performed for complex projects involving building & construction, engineering & design, IT & software development and organizational restructuring. It is performed by project managers or external auditors and often involves extensive interviews with project team members and stakeholders.
Project Audit Interview Checklist - Project Managers
Use this project audit checklist when interviewing a project manager to determine the project’s success criteria and key objectives. This interview should be conducted at the start of the project audit to prioritize which project managers to interview and assist with questionnaire development. This checklist includes fields to capture the following information:
- Key questions to assess readiness of project management team and alignment of plans
- Crucial details of the project including parties involved, success criteria and objectives
- Important elements of Project Scope Statement and Project Charter
In this article
- Main Types of Interviews to Conduct During a Project Audit
- Elements of a Good Project Audit Interview Questionnaire
- Powerful Tool for Conducting Project Audits
- Top 3 Project Audit Report Templates
Main Types of Interviews to Conduct During a Project Audit
The key to performing an effective project audit is to conduct targeted interviews with the right people. Here are three main types of interviews typically conducted during a project audit:
- With sponsors and project managers
Sponsors and project managers both play huge roles in defining realistic project objectives and success criteria. Extensive interviews should aim to discuss:- Budget and cost estimates
- Project charter, scope, and other required planning
- Project timeline and team schedules
- Quality and risk management
- Reporting and monitoring processes
- Communication process with clients, vendors, and stakeholders
- Proper documentation and record keeping
- With project team members
Project team members are on the ground, responsible for day-to-day activities and delivery of the project. Interviews should focus on their areas of concern, execution challenges, and opportunities for improvement. Discuss the following:-
Their understanding of the overall and individual project objectives
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Communication between project team members
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Equipment supplies
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Safety practices
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Reporting and monitoring processes
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General concerns about project delivery
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Challenges with achieving set tasks
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Opportunities for improvement
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- Interview with project stakeholders
Project stakeholders include individuals, groups, or organizations who would affect or be affected by the progress and/ or the completion of the project. Stakeholders provide expertise, increase project success, and most importantly, grant acceptance for the project. Interviews with project stakeholders is vital to recognize and discuss:- General issues to be addressed
- Organizational goals to be reached
- Expected job outcome
- Stakeholder group members that will be involved
- Roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders
- Timeline and next steps of the process
Elements of a Good Project Audit Interview Questionnaire
A good project audit interview questionnaire should delve into areas critical to the project’s compliance, efficacy and success. It should help project management teams gauge adjustments they need to take or processes they need to calibrate. Here are some examples questions to ask in a project audit questionnaire:
- Is the budget enough for the entire duration of the project?
- How are the objectives of the project determined?
- How are employees trained to meet the project goals/ objectives?
- What processes/ tools are in place to help achieve objectives?
- How is progress against objectives communicated to the organization? How is progress measured?
- How do we track progress against compliance?
- How do we identify a non-compliant process or product? How do we address relevant teams for non-compliance?
- How are issues with processes, quality, internal/ external groups of the project prevented? If there are existing issues, how are they addressed?
- How do we measure project maturity?
- How are proper documents and other records kept?
Powerful Tool for Conducting Project Audits
SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor) is the world’s #1 mobile app and can streamline project audits by making information gathering fast, easy and accessible online. Using the SafetyCulture mobile and web app you can:
- Perform paperless project audit interviews and inspections on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device
- Customize your questionnaires and share them instantly with your team using the SafetyCulture app
- Use speech-to-text dictation to easily complete audits
- Take unlimited photos as supporting evidence of project challenges and opportunities
- Gather electronic signatures as required
- Automatically save all reports online in the cloud
To help you get started on your paperless project audits, we have created the best project audit report templates you can download and customize for free.
Top 3 Project Audit Report Templates
Project Audit Questionnaire - Project Team Members
A project audit questionnaire is used as part of a project audit to interview project team members to identify concerns, challenges and opportunities related to the project. Conduct the interview by capturing the following information:
- Gather general feedback on the project including understanding of objectives, senior communication, collaboration and safety (if required)
- Ask questions related to concerns of the overall project and challenges faced in daily work
- Ask the team member to identify opportunities for improvement within their role or others
- Provide any additional notes and takeaways from the interview
- Gather signature from the project team member
Project Audit Questionnaire - Project Stakeholders
Use this project audit questionnaire template to gain project stakeholders’ insight on how to effectively approach essential areas for project success. This template lets project managers conduct interview research by involving questions about:
- Appropriate ways to accomplish business goals and objective
- Possible individuals or groups that need to be involved as key stakeholders
- Best strategies to deal with business competitors
- How to measure performance and how to address/ prevent performance hurdles
