By Jeff Rowbottom, Asset Protection Manager, Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine
Key takeaways:
Audits work best as a mindset, not an event. Facilities that inspect with an auditor’s objectivity, checking cleanability, coatings, and structural wear before problems escalate, catch what internal teams miss from familiarity.
Facility coatings are a hidden compliance risk. Cracking, peeling, or degraded flooring and containment coatings signal maintenance gaps to auditors and create real contamination and safety exposure, especially in wet processing environments.
Reactive fixes buy short-term compliance and long-term risk. Band-aid repairs pass today’s audit but let root causes compound, raising pathogen risk (E. coli, Listeria) in high-moisture facilities over time.
An auditor doesn’t walk your facility with a checklist. They walk it with a flashlight, checking corners, shadows, and the surfaces you stopped noticing months ago. FDA compliance in food and beverage manufacturing isn’t about passing that walkthrough. It’s about seeing your facility the way they do, before they do. When gaps in compliance occur, the impact goes beyond citations and can include significant financial loss, operational downtime, worker safety concerns, and potential damage to brand reputation and consumer trust.
Audits play a critical role in this process. These structured evaluations are designed to verify compliance with FDA standards while assessing the effectiveness of food safety programs and operational conditions. Rather than serving solely as enforcement tools, audits help identify risks, strengthen processes, and support consistent delivery of safe, high-quality products to market.
Although audits can sometimes be associated with pressure or viewed as a disruption to day-to-day operations, the facilities operating at the highest-level view them as drivers of continuous improvement. Facilities that prioritize internal inspections, preventative maintenance, and protective systems, such as high-performance coatings and flooring, are better positioned to reduce risk, avoid downtime and maintain product quality.
What it means to think like an auditor
With that reframing in mind, it raises the question, “What does it mean to think like an auditor?” It means evaluating your facility with objectivity and a focus on risk reduction.
In the food and beverage industry, auditors approach facilities through the lens of food safety risk and regulatory compliance. Unlike internal teams, they are walking through and observing with a level of objectivity that is often difficult to maintain in day-to-day operations. Conditions that might be missed by internal teams, such as minor surface damage or sanitation gaps, can represent significant compliance risks an auditor will quickly identify.
To think like an auditor, you must deliberately set aside this familiarity and assess your facility as if seeing it for the first time. This includes evaluating the cleanability of surfaces, sanitation conditions, and any signs of deterioration that could contribute to contamination risk – from flooring and containment systems to structural materials and ceilings. It goes beyond obvious hygiene concerns to consider overall facility integrity, such as flooring conditions that could lead to failures or slip hazards, the performance of contaminant systems, and structural materials showing wear or damage. Ceilings are another critical area, where issues like cracks, leaks, or delamination can introduce contamination from above. These conditions illustrate how, from an auditor’s perspective, safety and compliance risks are closely linked.
One practical way to adopt this mindset is to replicate audit conditions during internal inspections. Teams can go beyond routine walkthroughs by applying the same level of scrutiny and utilizing the tools an auditor would use, such as enhanced flashlights to inspect surfaces and carefully examine corners, shadows, and other hard-to-see areas where issues often go unnoticed. When this level of consideration is integrated into internal programs, it enables teams to identify gaps before they are flagged in an external audit.
Ultimately, to think like an auditor means to do your due diligence by actively seeking risks before they escalate, protecting operations, profitability and brand reputation.
The role of coatings in audit readiness and facility performance
While audits can include the evaluation of a wide range of factors, from sanitation practices to operational controls, facility conditions remain a highly visible and critical component of compliance. That’s why coatings play a critical, but often underestimated role in the process.
Coating systems applied to floors, walls, and containment areas may not be the sole focus of an audit, but they serve as a facility’s first line of defense against contamination, deterioration, and safety risks. When properly installed and maintained, coatings create surfaces that are easier to clean, more resistant to moisture and chemical exposure, and less likely to harbor contaminants in processing. Conversely, deteriorating coatings, which can lead to peeling, cracking, or flaking, can quickly raise concerns during an audit and can signal gaps in maintenance practices.
Beyond food safety, coatings are essential for protecting both people and infrastructure. High-performance flooring systems improve traction and reduce slip-and-fall risks, while coatings used in secondary containment areas help prevent leaks and environmental exposure. Well-specified systems also support hygienic design by providing smooth, non-porous surfaces that withstand aggressive sanitation protocols, reducing the risk of bacterial harborage.
In high-moisture or washdown environments, coatings act as a barrier against water intrusion, chemical exposure and thermal stress, which are all factors that can degrade underlying concrete or steel over time. By protecting these surfaces from wear and damage, coatings extend asset lifespan and help minimize costly repairs or unplanned downtime.
From an audit perspective, well-maintained coatings signal a proactive approach to facility management. They demonstrate an investment in preventative measures that support compliance, worker safety and operational continuity. In this way, coatings are not simply a maintenance consideration, but a critical component of a facility’s overall risk management strategy.
From reactive to proactive: a shift in mindset
The shift from reactive correction to proactive identification and resolution of issues is a key differentiator between high-performing food and beverage facilities and those at ongoing risk of operational disruption and non-compliance.
A reactive approach often resembles a “band-aid” strategy, where issues are addressed only to maintain operations or pass an audit. While such measures may achieve short-term compliance, repeated quick fixes can allow issues to persist. Over time, particularly in wet processing environments, this can contribute to the buildup of toxins and increase the risk of more serious food safety concerns, including the spread of pathogens such as E. coli or Listeria. Just as importantly, reactive measures fail to address underlying causes, limiting long-term compliance and performance.
In contrast, a proactive approach treats coatings as a critical component of hygienic design. This mindset emphasizes early engagement of a coating partner, routine inspections, risk-based prioritization, and early intervention prior to failures becoming long-term issues.
This distinction is particularly evident in how these coatings are managed. Under a reactive model, failures such as peeling, blistering, or cracking are addressed only when they become visibly apparent or are identified during an audit. Corrective actions are typically limited to surface-level repairs that achieve short-term compliance, rather than resolving the underlying cause.
A proactive strategy, however, prioritizes proper system selection and long-term performance in all areas of the food and beverage processing environment. High-performance flooring and coatings systems must be engineered to support cleanability, durability, and compliance with FDA-aligned material expectations. When approached this way, coatings move beyond maintenance and become integral to both food safety and overall facility performance.
Building resilience through smarter compliance practices
Adopting a proactive mindset and approach has both practical benefits for food and beverage operations. Identifying and addressing deficiencies early helps reduce maintenance demands, minimize operational disruptions and support long-term compliance.
Engaging experienced coating suppliers early in the process further strengthens this approach. Through site surveys, tailored system recommendations, and guidance on proper installation and maintenance, these partners help ensure solutions are aligned with real-world facility conditions. Independent assessments, such as third-party audits or voluntary inspections, can also play a valuable role by identifying risks before they surface in a regulatory setting.
Ultimately, audit outcomes reflect everyday practices. Facilities that invest in proactive inspection, proper coating selection and long-term maintenance strategies are better equipped to manage risk, maintain compliance, and operate with confidence in the long-term.
Jeff Rowbottom currently serves as an Asset Protection Manager at Sherwin-Williams for the State of Tennessee, bringing over two decades of experience in the coatings industry, with a specialized focus on protective coatings. His expertise centers on manufacturing and processing facilities, where he works closely with ownership teams to evaluate project requirements and recommend the most effective coating systems tailored to each application.
