- Global Glossary
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- Published 6 April 2021
- Updated 5 March 2022
Hello, thank you for vising the Strytex Knowledge Base, we hope you find it useful.
Just to let you know, we are not experts in every compliance topic in every country in the world. To be experts, we would have to employ hundreds of subject matter experts around the world and that is not who we are.
However, because we deal with thousands of certificates across various industries, we pick up a lot of useful information and because we are curious, we do a bit of research to get a basic understanding of the document and what it’s used for. We happily make this information available and provided in good faith on the basis that it may provide some guidance.
We must stress that Strytex gives no warranty nor bears any liability whatsoever with respect to the correctness, accuracy, currency, completeness, relevancy or otherwise of this information any template or sample document. You must obtain professional advice from a duly qualified person or subject matter expert. Please read the full disclaimer here.
All of the global glossary articles follow this template. It’s not 100% perfect so please bear with us as we update over 100 articles.
Description
This section provides a general description of the document.
Geographic relevance
Some documents are relevant to a specific country or state while others are pretty much recognisable worldwide. For example, to the best of our knowledge, a BWOF (Building Warrant of Fitness) is only used in New Zealand.
Even if we state a document is applicable to a country, state or globally, check with your local subject matter expert because your area may recognise the document under a different name. It is better to be safe than sorry!
ORC Matrix Classification
Every organisation in the world arranges their financial records into ledgers e.g Sales Ledger, Purchasing Ledger and General Ledger.
For the same reason, Strytex has developed the ORC Model (Obligational awareness, Risk management and Compliance administration) so that organisations can structure their operational compliance records in a consistent systematic way.
Here is a short summary but for a detailed explanation see the ORC Model.
Obligation Hierarchy
| Hierarchy | Comments | |
|---|---|---|
|
Governmental |
|
STATUTORY and REGULATORY - All federal, state and local government statutory and regulatory requirements. Breaches can lead to fines or imprisonment. |
|
Critical |
|
BUSINESS CRITICAL/CONTINUITY - Ensure the continuity of the business. Breaches would have a devastating impact on the business and impair its ability to continue operating. |
|
Essential |
|
BEST PRACTICE, STANDARDS or CONTRACTUAL - Industry best practice, non-legal standards and contractual requirements. No fines or jail terms . |
|
Ethical |
|
ETHICS - What should be done as opposed to what must be done. |
|
Discretionary |
|
DISCRETIONARY and ASSET MAINTENANCE - Driven by economic efficiencies and brand requirements. Often the manufacturers recommendations. |
|
Legacy |
|
LEGACY or RED TAPE - We’ve always done it. |
Risk Topic
Compliance documents can be relevant to multiple risk topics. Each organisation must create its own lexicon of risk topics and assign each compliance document to one or more risk topics.
The ORC Model suggests risk topics are categorised by
- Size and type of company
- Industry
- Department and
- Subject matter
The following list is provided as an example:
- EHS/WHS
- Fire Safety
- Reputational risk
- Contractor Risk
- Financial risk
- Business continuity
- Child safety
- Data Protection
- Fire safety
- Food safety
- Product safety
- Supplier compliance
- Supply chain risk and compliance
- Workplace Health and Safety
- etc
Compliance Class
| Class | Documents that... | For example. |
|---|---|---|
|
Staff |
has someone’s name on it. |
Training records, trade qualifications |
|
Property |
refer to a whole property. |
ISO certificates, food safety certificates, annual fire safety certificates. |
|
Asset |
refer to an asset within a property. |
Maintenance records, installation and commissioning records, repairs |
|
Product |
relate to a raw or manufactured product. |
Homologation certificates, product safety certificates, test results. |
|
Contract |
are contract or project specific. |
Contract specific insurance, contract terms |
|
Company |
refer to the whole company and covers everything else. |
Liability insurance, policies, procedures. |
How used
This section explains how the document may be used to manage assurance, where
- Internal assurance refers to documents that refer to your business, your staff, your properties, your assets etc
- External assurance refers to documents provided by your supplier or supply chain and refer to their staff, products, properties, etc.
Internal Assurance
Explains how and why the internal document is used.
External Assurance
Explains how and why the external document is used.
Details
We’ve noted many other subsidiary characteristics for compliance documents.
Also known as
Some glossary items have multiple names. It may depend on what part of the world you are in, what profession you are in or even how knowledgeable you are. For example,
| Formal name | Also known as |
|---|---|
|
Certificate of Currency - WorkCover Insurance |
Workers Comp |
|
Backup Generator maintenance |
Standby Generator maintenance |
|
Fire evacuation - Assembly point map |
Evacuation diagram; Evacuation plan |
Variants
Occasionally, but not always, we will group a set of documents because they are all variants on a single document theme, e.g
- Public Liability Insurance,
- Product Liability Insurance
- Professional Liability Insurance
- etc.
Renewal Frequency
Many documents have multiple renewal periods, for example, you may have a 5-year driver’s licence or a 10-year driver’s licence. Asset maintenance or food safety documents have multiple renewal and/or maintenance frequencies. For example in Australia fire extinguishers must be serviced
- six-monthly
- yearly
- every 5 years.
2nd level attributes
This is different to variants. Some glossary items have critical compliance related 2nd level attributes,
- how much is the liability insurance for?
- what type of plumber licence is it and what types of work are they authorised to carry out?
You want to make sure your supplier has the right level of insurance, you want to make sure your plumber is qualified to carry out the task.
Relevant Acts, Regulations and Standards
PLEASE NOTE that we will not provide an exhaustive list of Acts, Regulations and Standards. We do not provide that service.
If this is important to your organisation, we strongly recommend your organisation subscribes to a regulatory notification service. We may list relevant acts or regulations if they are very clear but this list and/or links WILL NOT be kept up to date. We would have to charge significantly more for this type of service and we would have to employ hundreds of people across the world.
Useful Links
We may include important and useful links. Again, we will not keep these up to date.
- Copyright © Strytex Pty Ltd 2023
Table of Contents
Nigel Dalton-Brown GAICD, AMIIA, MBA
Managing Director
Nigel is the Founder of Strytex and has been presenting and writing on Goverence, Obligational Awarenss, Risk Management and Compliance administration (GORC) since 2010.
