Developing the pest program for an SQF facility and writing the pest portions of the food safety plan, in the language the rest of the plan is already written in.
What this engagement is, and what it is not
This is program development. Graduate builds the pest management program for a facility that is certified — or preparing to be certified — to a food safety standard, and writes the pest portions of the food safety plan so that they read as part of the plan rather than as an attachment to it.
It is an advisory engagement. It is taken with or without the service contract, and the two are priced and scoped separately on purpose. A facility that keeps the contractor it has and wants the program built properly around them is the more common client, not the exception. Consulting here is not a route into selling service work, and the page says so because the alternative is a client wondering, halfway through, what is actually being sold.
Why the pest program is where audits go wrong
Pest control sits underneath a food safety plan as a prerequisite program. That word does a lot of quiet damage: it makes the program sound preliminary, when what it actually means is that everything above it assumes the program is working. An auditor does not open the pest file to see whether the floor is clean. They open it to see whether the site knows what is happening in its own building.
The failure is almost never an infestation on audit day. It is a binder of service tickets that records attendance rather than findings, a device map that does not match what is on the wall, a corrective action closed with the word “monitoring”, and eighteen months of catch data nobody has ever plotted. Each of those is a documentation failure rather than a pest failure, and every one of them is fixable before an auditor arrives.
What gets built
The device layout and the site map. Numbered devices placed against the building’s actual risk — entry points, dock doors, drains, voids and the routes between them — rather than spaced evenly around a perimeter because a template said so. The map has to match the floor exactly, because the first thing an auditor does is pick a number off the map and go find it.
The record structure. What gets written down at each device, in what units, by whom, and where it lands. Records that can be aggregated later have to be designed to be aggregated; a free-text box cannot be trended, and nobody discovers that until the year is over.
The trend analysis. Catch data plotted over time, by area and by species, with the thresholds that trigger a response written down in advance. This is the single most common gap. A site with good raw data and no analysis has a filing system, not a monitoring program.
The corrective action route. What happens when a threshold is crossed, who owns the structural half of it, who owns the sanitation half, and what closing an action actually requires. Sanitation and structure meet constantly in pest work, and an action that does not name its owner does not get done.
The chemical documentation. Labels, safety data sheets, application records and the approvals that go with them, held where they can be produced rather than assembled the night before.
What the standards actually ask for
Different schemes read the same program through different lenses, and the program has to satisfy the one the site is certified to rather than a general idea of good practice.
SQF benchmarks against the Global Food Safety Initiative and expects a documented system audited by a licensed certification body, with the pest element assessed as one of the prerequisite programs. The device map, the service records, the trend analysis, the corrective actions and the chemical documentation all have to stand up unedited.
AIB scores in bands, treats integrated pest management as one of five categories, and sets the category score by the most significant observation rather than the average. One serious structural condition can pull the category down regardless of how tidy the rest of the plant is — which is why a program built against AIB has to be built against the structure, not the housekeeping.
FSMA is the regulatory floor underneath all of it in the United States. Preventive controls sit with a qualified individual, and the rule at 21 CFR 117.180 is explicit that this person need not be an employee of the facility. That is the provision this engagement works inside.
The PCQI boundary, stated plainly
Ryan Katz holds PCQI, HACCP and AIB certification. Those are what make it possible to write pest content into a food safety plan in the plan’s own language and have it survive being read as part of it.
They do not make Graduate the signatory preventive controls qualified individual for a facility. That person owns the whole plan — allergens, sanitation, process controls, the lot — and the role stays with the plant, where the responsibility for it belongs. Graduate writes the pest portion. The signature is not for sale and would not be a good idea if it were.
Where this work happens
The service business is New York City and Nassau and Suffolk counties. It goes no further, and the service area pages say so.
Consulting is not bounded that way. Ryan travels for it, regularly and internationally, including to offshore assets — which is what the TWIC, HUET and Tier 1 offshore credentials are for. A Transportation Worker Identification Credential is what allows unescorted access to a secure maritime facility; helicopter underwater escape training is what allows boarding the aircraft that reaches a platform. Those are not decorations on the credentials page. They are the reason certain sites can be worked at all.
What it costs
Quoted per engagement, with no rate published here. Local work, onshore travel and offshore work are three genuinely different numbers, and one figure on a page would be wrong for two of them.
Describe the site, the standard it is certified to, where it is, and whether you want the program built around your existing contractor or alongside a service contract. That is enough to quote against.
Common questions
What does this engagement actually deliver?
A pest management program built for the standard the site is certified to, and the pest sections of the food safety plan written to sit inside it: the device layout and site map, the service and monitoring record structure, the trend analysis, the corrective action route, and the chemical documentation. Audit readiness is not a separate product sold alongside it. It is what building the program properly produces.
Do you have to be our pest control contractor to do this?
No, and it is deliberately sold that way. Plenty of facilities keep the contractor they have and want the program built properly around them. That is a clean advisory engagement and it is the more common one. Where Graduate also holds the service contract the work is the same work; the consulting is not a route into selling it.
Will Ryan Katz act as our PCQI?
No. He holds PCQI, HACCP and AIB certification, which is what lets him write pest content that speaks the plan's language and survives an audit. The signatory preventive controls qualified individual for a facility owns allergens, sanitation and process controls — the whole plan — and that role stays with the plant. Graduate writes the pest portion, not the signature.
Where do you do this work?
Anywhere. The service side of the business is New York City and Nassau and Suffolk counties and nothing beyond it, but consulting travels — including offshore, which is what the TWIC, HUET and Tier 1 offshore credentials on the credentials page are for.
What does it cost?
It is quoted per engagement and there is no rate published here, because local work, onshore travel and offshore work are three different numbers and a single published figure would be wrong for two of them. Describe the site, the standard it is certified to and where it is, and you will get a real number.
We already have a program and it passes. Why would we need this?
Passing and being defensible are different states. A program can clear an audit for years on the strength of a tidy floor and a full binder, and fail the first time an auditor reads the trend data and asks what it means. If the records are a log of visits rather than a body of evidence, that gap is what this engagement closes.
How does this relate to training our own team?
Training the in-house team is a separate engagement rather than a module inside this one. Building a program and teaching people to run it are different pieces of work with different audiences, and bundling them tends to mean neither is done properly.
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Food Safety & SQF Program Consulting
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