Once you and your organisation are convinced about the various benefits of implementing an Environmental Management System (EMS) based on the recommendations of ISO 14001, the most crucial factor comes into play. You must decide on how you want to implement your EMS- on your own, or do you want to hire an external consultant. In this article, we will help you analyse if hiring an ISO 14001 consultant is an ideal choice by outlining its benefits, its methodology and certain disadvantages that no one really talked about.

What is ISO 14001 consulting

When organisations wish to implement an EMS, they must adhere to the clause by clause recommendations of ISO 14001 in order to achieve full compliance. As one can imagine, this process negates an expert that has knowledge and experience in both the requirements of ISO 14001 and the practical implementation of EMS. During a consultancy process, an expert comes to an organisation and observes the current environmental controls that are in place, going on to check their coherence with the ISO 14001 clauses and suggesting corrective steps. Hence, to summarise, the ISO 14001 consulting process is the series of actions through which an expert, formally known as an ISO 14001 consultant, initiates, implements, audits, modifies and improves your EMS.

Benefits of ISO 14001 consulting

When you have a robust plan for developing and implementing EMS, you can considerably minimise the time and expenses involved in the certification process. External help to implement your EMS is beneficial as the enhanced knowledge-base of the ISO 14001 consultant will help you:

  • Reduce EMS development and implementation time.
  • Improve the effectiveness of your EMS.
  • Remove obstacles from the path of certification.
  • Fulfil any legal and regulatory requirements.
  • Augment your ability to set and achieve effective EMS objectives.
  • Develop a culture of continual improvement within your organisation.

Methodology for ISO 14001 consulting

To materialise the ultimate outcome of an effective and efficient plan for the EMS development, it is necessary to utilise an organised and logical approach for implementing ISO 14001:2015 recommendations. The ISO 14001:2015 standard requires that organisations achieve compliance to a defined series of interrelated and planned stages, including:

  • Creating an executive overview of management planning.
  • Conducting a EMS gap assessment of the current status.
  • Developing processes and documents in accordance to the recommendations.
  • Providing appropriate training.
  • Implementing the EMS.
  • Conducting internal audits and management reviews.
  • Mitigating deficiencies and non-conformities.
  • Applying for third-party registration assessment.
  • Sustaining and continually improving the EMS.

 

This is the general overview of the ISO 14001 consulting methodology. The actual process begins with planning where the context of the organisation is defined in addition to defining the scope of the EMS. In this phase, the needs and expectations of workers and other interested parties are identified, leadership and worker participation is defined, support and operational requirements are highlighted with the help of a high-level processes and systems. This allows the organisation to create effective objectives and targets regarding the environmental performance.

In the next phase, namely the gap assessment and planning phase, the EMS process map is used as a guide to perform a gap assessment of the current EMS with its process owners. The consultant then utilises all these inputs from process owners and the assessment into process development.

Additionally, the results from the assessments are used to create level one policy documents where the consultant involves the leaders. Again, the EMS process map is utilised as a guide in process development, so that organisational roles, responsibilities and authorities can be appropriately defined. At this stage, the consultant will develop specific actions to address the risks and opportunities that are unique to your organisation. Hazard identification and assessment of risks also allows you to determine legal requirements and other statutory obligations.

At this stage, the EMS objectives and the plans to achieve them should be cemented. Utilising input from the process owners, their own expert advice and guidance from the leadership, the ISO 14001 consultant will define the support requirements, evaluate required worker competence to support the EMS, establish training plans as required and establish a plan to ensure adequate awareness of the EMS across all levels of your organisation.

planning for iso 14001 implementation

As a result of the adequate planning, your EMS processes will be created using a process approach that eliminates hazards and reduces risks, changes management procedures and creates emergency preparedness.

The performance requirements are defined so that your EMS can be effectively monitored, measured, analysed and sustained. Internal auditing is a crucial part to get the effectiveness of your EMS and the audit should focus on both the core and support functional areas. ISO 14001 consultant will define audit schedules and communicate it to process owners, going on to initiate corrective actions as required.

The purpose of the entire consultancy process is to close any open items or corrective actions for internal assessments going on to complete cross reference of EMS versus the requirements of ISO 14001. The aim is to prepare you for the registrar assessment, so that the certification process is conducted without any obstacles.

Conclusion

The ISO 14001 consultancy procedure begins by executive planning and overview of the current EMS, so that a gap assessment can be conducted. The development of processes and documentation is done in accordance to the report of the gap assessment. This includes corrective actions, implementation of process modification and conduction of training programmes.