Last week, I got the call no biomass owner wants. A large, well-run dairy farm had been served a 10-day audit notice. These are people who run a tight ship, but an Ofgem audit is a different beast entirely. I did the 3.5-hour dash to the site to make sure they weren’t going into the lion’s den alone.
The “Trick Question” Trap
The audit lasted four hours, and it was brutal. I’ve seen hundreds of these, but even I heard “trick” questions I’ve never heard before. The problem wasn’t that the farm was doing anything wrong—it was the language. The auditor was using high-level technical biomass terminology and “Ofgem-speak.” The clients were dairy farmers.
Without a translator, a simple “I’m not sure” can be recorded by an auditor as a failure in management control.
Holding the Line
That’s where I come in. My job during those four hours was to stop the “fishing.”
- When the auditor probed, I could say: “No, we don’t do it that way here, we do it this way—which is fully compliant.”* When they questioned a document: “It’s not the latest version, but it is 100% valid under current legislation.”
The Result: Fewer Battles to Fight
By being there in the yard, we nipped the “trick” non-compliances in the bud. When the final report comes back, I won’t be reading about a stranger’s farm; I’ll be reading about a site I’ve walked personally. If there’s anything in that report I don’t agree with, I have the facts to counter it immediately.
The Takeaway: You wouldn’t go to court without a solicitor. Don’t go into an Ofgem audit without someone who speaks the language.