The ISO 14000 EMS Audit Handbook

Greg Johnson

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781574440690
• eBook ISBN: 9781000170191
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Operations
• Index: Business

The ISO 14000 EMS Audit Handbook is an innovative and cost-effective approach for the Environmental Management System (EMS) audit to ISO 14001. The Handbook presents comprehensive strategies for conducting all phases of the EMS audit, including effective assessment processes for determining improved environmental performance.

1 Introduction to EMS Audits

What Is an Environmental Management System?¹

An environmental management system (EMS) is that aspect of an organization’s overall management structure which addresses the immediate and long-term impact of its products, services, and processes on the environment. It provides order and consistency in organizational methodologies through the allocation of resources, assignment of responsibilities, and ongoing evaluation of practices, procedures, and processes.

An EMS is essential to an organization’s ability to anticipate and meet growing environmental performance expectations and to ensure ongoing compliance with national and international requirements. EMSs succeed best when corporations make environmental management among their highest priorities.

In general, environmental management systems should achieve the following principles:

• establish an appropriate environmental policy, including a commitment to prevention of pollution;

• determine the legislative requirements and environmental aspects associated with the organization’s activities, products, and services;

• develop management and employee commitment to the protection of the environment with clear assignment of accountability and responsibility;

• encourage environmental planning throughout the full range of the organization’s activities, from raw material acquisition through product distribution;

• establish a disciplined management process for achieving targeted performance levels;

• provide appropriate and sufficient resources, including training, to achieve targeted performance levels on an ongoing basis;

• establish and maintain an emergency preparedness and response program;

• establish a system of operational control and maintenance of the program to ensure continuing high levels of system performance;

• evaluate environmental performance against the policy and appropriate objectives and targets and seek improvement where appropriate;

• establish a management process to review and audit the EMS and to identify opportunities for improvement of the system and resulting environmental performance;

• establish and maintain appropriate communications with internal and external interested parties; and

• encourage contractors and suppliers to establish an EMS.

The EMS Movement²

Public concern over industry’s impact on the world’s environment is increasing. Politically oriented bodies such as environmental advocacy organizations, watchdog groups, and the “green” parties that have established footholds in most European parliaments are urging businesses to take respon- sibility for their environmental effects. This pressure from the public sector has led to a rash of proposed and enacted environmental legislation worldwide.

However, recent reports are showing that companies choose to imple- ment an EMS far more for internal management system efficiencies, waste reduction, and proactive regulatory compliance than for any other purpose.

One survey that supports these reports is the Voluntary Environmental Audit Survey of U.S. Businesses published in April 1995 by Price Waterhouse LLP. It found that of 369 respondents, 75% have an environmental compliance auditing program in place. While the survey did not address EMS audits specifically, it found that fully 96% of those that audit do so because “prob- lems can be identified internally and corrected before they are discovered by an agency inspection.” Another 94% stated that they audit “to improve our company’s overall environmental program and make it proactive.”

The reasons many companies are now adopting an environmental management system include the following:

• improve compliance with legislative and regulatory requirements, including requirements that certain information relating to environmental performance be made public;

• reduce liability/risk;

• generate a desire to benefit from regulatory incentives that reward companies showing environmental leadership through certified compliance with an EMS;

• prevent pollution and reduce waste;

• generate a desire to profit in the market for “green” products;

• improve internal management methods;

• manage pressure from shareholder groups;

• create community goodwill;

• generate interest in attracting a high-quality work force; and

• manage insurance companies’ unwillingness to issue coverage for pollution incidents unless the firm requesting coverage has a proven environmental management system in place.

Development of the International EMS Standard³

Efforts to create a single, generic, internationally recognized EMS standard have been driven by the desire among companies to avoid duplicate— and sometimes competitive—corporate and governmental programs and by their need for objective validation of their commitment.

Such efforts have begun on several fronts, but one has led the way to ISO 14001. In England, the British Standards Institution (BSI) developed BS 7750, Environmental Management Systems, as a companion to its BS 5750 standard on quality management systems. BS 5750 was the forerunner and template for ISO 9000. In 1991, the Strategic Advisory Group on Environment (SAGE) was established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to make recommendations regarding international standards for the environment, and it spent nearly two years studying BS 7750 and other national EMS standards to determine the need for an ISO international standard. The result of its study was the formation of Technical Committee (TC) 207 and the beginning of the development of ISO 14001.

Introduction to EMS Audits

Involved management and discipline is the key to environmental quality. Audits are the investigations that determine the extent of an activity’s ability to implement and maintain an effective EMS. EMS audits are performed by contractors, customers, environmental and quality personnel, and government and regulatory agencies. Teams are composed of combinations of technical and administrative personnel, seldom with sufficient continuing experience to perform this function in the highly professional manner required. Therefore, an experienced and qualified auditor must lead a group of technical or administrative individuals in any audit situation. When formal training cannot be provided for these individuals, it becomes the responsibility of the experienced auditor to ensure there is adequate performance of the audit function. Without this guidance, the data collected, the conclusions, and the recommendations may be suspect and even invalid.

Audits to monitor and measure environmental systems performance pro- mote close coordination and develop mutual understanding. Most regulatory and government agencies responsible for complex systems and projects audit contractors and their major subcontractors. In addition, hundreds of contrac- tors are administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE). They continually audit and review the environmental performance of contractors within their regulatory jurisdiction.

Training and preparations for performing audits in some industries have been self-induced. Until about 1980, those who had performed environmental program audits taught themselves from the knowledge they had gained through working in quality control and related environmental fields. Little effort was expended by major manufacturers, or even the government, for that matter, to train and qualify environmental audit personnel.

Since the author began intensified environmental auditor training courses for commercial and government industries in 1988, there has been increasing emphasis on “qualifying” individuals through seminars. Standards used to qualify these individuals included the following:

• ANSI-NQA-1 2S-3, “Supplementary Requirement for the Qualification of Quality Assurance Program Personnel”

• ANSI-N45.2.23, “Qualifications of Quality Assurance Program Audit Personnel for Nuclear Power Plants”

Quality Assurance Program Personnel? Isn’t this a book on Environmental Management Systems Audit?

...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedifation
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction to EMS Audits
• 2 The ISO 14000 Series Audit Standards
• 3 Initial Environmental Review (IER) and Gap Analysis
• 4 Ems Audit Programme Design
• 5 ISO 14001 Interpretation for Audit
• 6 The Audited Organization
• 7 Ems Audit Planning
• 8 Scheduling the Audit
• 9 The Pre-Audit Conference
• 10 The Ems Audit
• 11 THE POST-AUDIT CONFERENCE
• 12 EMS Audit Reporting
• 13 FOLLOW-UP AUDIT AND CLOSE-OUT
• 14 SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENTAL AUDITS AND ASSESSMENTS
• 15 EMS Auditor Qualification, Certification, and Training