On-the-ground assessments
Suppliers, not facilities
Commissioned by refiners and traders who require visibility of conditions upstream. The assessment takes place at the mine site, the ASM production zone, the exporter or the intermediary, and reports what is found there.
The output feeds the commissioning party’s own risk identification under Step 2 of the OECD Due Diligence Guidance. It is neither a certification nor an assurance opinion: it is evidence that can be acted upon, and defended to a scheme or a regulator.
Artisanal and small-scale sites turn on chain of custody, informality, security arrangements and child labour risk. Large-scale sites raise different questions: management systems, tailings, community grievance and labour relations. The work is largely social — worker and community interviews, age verification, conditions of work — and draws on a decade of factory-floor and site-level social auditing.
Scheme audits
RMI, LBMA, Copper Mark, LPPM, ITA, EBC
Refiner and smelter audits against each programme's own protocol, conformance criteria and reporting format. Most of this work is RMI's Responsible Minerals Assurance Process, then LBMA, the Copper Mark's Joint Due Diligence Standard and LPPM.
Copper Mark facility assessments run against the full RRA 3.0 criteria — all 33 environmental, social and governance criteria, mandatory for participants since 2025 — with the Joint Due Diligence Standard for copper, lead, molybdenum, nickel and zinc sitting within the second part of Criterion 10.
Assurance engagements
ISAE 3000
Assurance engagements conducted under ISAE 3000, including Tin Code Standard 7.3 responsible sourcing assurance, engagements under the EBC Rules for Risk-Based Due Diligence in the Gold Supply Chain, and equivalent programme requirements.
Standards and assurance development
Working with scheme owners
Standards development work with scheme owners, input on audit process and auditor guidance, and development of training for auditors working in a given value chain.
This work is carried out for standard-setting bodies rather than for assessed companies.
Alignment assessments
Of programmes, not companies
Assessment of upstream mechanisms and industry programmes against the OECD Alignment Assessment Methodology, and of standards against the requirements of the bodies that recognise them — including as an approved alignment assessor for the LME.
This calls for a different reading of the evidence: whether a programme's own controls do what it claims, at the level of the system.
