The ISO 14000 family of standards provides practical tools for organisations of all categories, allowing them to manage their environmental responsibilities.

ISO 14001 (Environmental Management System) improves businesses by identifying, managing, monitoring and controlling their environmental concerns in a “whole” manner.

ISO 14001 requires that a business should consider all environmental aspects critical to its operations. For example, Waste Management, Soil Contamination, Air Pollution, Water and Sewage issues, Climate change mitigation and adaptation.

 ISO 14001 same as other ISO Standards should have systems and strategies for continual improvement towards environmental concerns. The standard has recently been revised, with crucial enhancements such as the prominent significance of environmental management within the organisation’s tactical planning processes, increased contribution from leadership and a more robust responsibility to positive initiatives that increase environmental efficiency.

Benefits ISO 14001 (Environmental Management System)

• Boost the requirement for your products and services through an advertising advantage.
• Reduce organisation expenses only by trimming resource utilisation and waste production or improve resource efficiency.
• Achieve environmental commitments and environmental policy requirement.
• Commit to social responsibilities.
• Promote a positive impression with stakeholders, clients, and staff members.
• Gain a competitive advantage in supply chain design.
• Increase new business opportunities.
• Manage environmental obligations with consistency.

Context of the Organisation

There is a requirement to find out an organisation’s direct environmental impacts. How environmental surroundings can affect your business, customers and supply chain.

• The organisation should determine issues that are appropriate to its purpose and affects its ability to accomplish the intended outcomes of its environmental management system.
• Internal issues might be noise pollution, air quality, or waste haulage and its costs. External issues might comprise customers and legal requirements.
• Interested parties or stakeholders could be an individual or an organisation that can affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by an organisation’s decisions or activities. The organisation’s adjoining neighbours, various governmental environmental agencies could be interested parties as well as customers.
• Other interested parties may include communities, suppliers, regulators, NGOs, investors, employees and trade unions.
• The EMS would consist of necessary processes for the organisation to be successful.

 

Leadership

• Top management must show commitment to supporting Environmental management system development and implementation.
• Management has a role in ensuring that the goals for the Environmental management system are clear and consistent with other organisational goals.
• Management's commitment should be communicated across the organisation.
• Management should have the necessary authority and an understanding of the organisation.
• Management should have the time to commit to the Environmental management system-building process and must have top management support.
• Contractors, suppliers or other external parties could be included as part of the project team.

Planning

The organisation must ensure the management system can achieve its intended outcomes and achieve continual improvement.

• Organisation representatives will need to meet regularly, especially in the early stages of the organisation’s activities or products or services.
• A cross-functional team can assist in ensuring that procedures are practical and useful and can build commitment to the EMS.

Risks and opportunities

Risks and opportunities are defined in ISO 14001:2015 as potential adverse effects (risks/threats) and possible beneficial effects (opportunities).
The EMS requires that documented information shall be kept of the risks and opportunities and the processes needed to ensure that the process meets expectations.
It may well be good practice to generate an official Risk Register where identification, discussion, actions, outcome, and monitoring can all be recorded and results evaluated.

Risks	may turn into problems.
Opportunities	may turn into benefits.

           

 

Examples of possible risk

• being not compliant with legislation which could lead to a loss of customers due to negative publicity.

Example of an opportunity

• An organisation is capitalising on energy efficiency measures which cut production costs, leading to an increase in competitiveness.

Examples of Aspects and Impacts

Activity	Aspects	Impacts
Changing Oil	Air Emissions Use of Oil, Absorbents Recycling of Oil Spills	Degrade Air Quality  Consumption of Natural Resources  Increase Landfill Space  Degrade Water Quality
Operation of Equipment	Dust Generations Air Emissions Use of Raw materials	Degradation of Air Quality Degradation of Air Quality Use of Natural resources.
Central Air Conditioning	Energy Consumption	Use of Natural Resources
Land filling	Disposal	Contamination of land
Storm Water Management	Water Flow	Erosion
Excavation	Soil disturbance	Erosion
Generation of Solid Waste	Land Usage	Aesthetics and Community environment
Toilet flushing and Hand Washing	Water Usages	Use of natural resources
Flaring	Air emissions	Air degradation
Processing of composting	Water quality	Water degradation
Farming	Tillage	Erosion, Sediment Loading

Support of the Environmental management system

Resources
are required for the effective functioning and improvement of the EMS and to enhance environmental performance.

Competence
Applies to persons working under the organisation’s control, who can affect its environmental performance.

Awareness
EMS doesn’t need to be memorised, but persons should be aware of its existence, its purpose and their role in achieving the commitments and compliance obligations.

Internal / External Communication 
Understandable to all interested parties. It must be  truthful and include all relevant factual and accurate information

Documented Information
An organisation should create and maintain documented information in a manner sufficient to ensure a suitable, adequate and effective environmental management system. It doesn’t have to be in the form of a manual.

Examples of Competence needs

Potential areas of competence	Typical organisational roles	Examples of competencies/capabilities needed	Examples of the means for establishing competence
Environmental technology	Environmental technicians	Proficiency in environmental sampling Ability to operate monitoring equipment	Training and assessment on collection requirements and practices Certification or license for equipment use
	Environmental programme managers	Proficiency in applicable environmental regulations	Degree in environmental field Training on applicable regulations
Environmental operations	Persons whose work activities involve significant environmental aspects	Awareness of how their work affects environmental performance Knowledge of operating criteria that need to be met to minimise adverse environmental impact	Training on environmental impacts associated with their work Training on operating rules to ensure processes are controlled

Definition of Life Cycle: 

The definition of the life cycle as per ISO 14001:2015 is ‘Consecutive and interlinked stages of a product (or service) system, from the raw material acquisition or generation from natural resources to final disposal. Life cycle stages include the acquisition of raw materials, design, production, transportation/delivery, use, end-of-life treatment, and final disposal.

Controlling outsourced processes

An organisation should consider how external providers and outsourced operations can affect its ability to manage its environmental aspects and fulfil their compliance obligations.
An organisation should establish operational controls that are needed. They could be documented procedures, contracts or supplier agreements, or end-user instructions, and communicate them to its contractors, suppliers and users, as appropriate.

Reducing emergencies

Effective planning and groundwork can decrease injuries, protect employees and neighbours, reduce asset losses and minimise production downtime.
An effective emergency preparation and response program should include requirements for assessing the potential for accidents and emergencies, preventing incidents and their associated environmental impacts.

Monitoring and Measuring

Monitoring
can be a process that can checks whether something is happening as intended or planned. e.g. if an operational control states that housekeeping audits will occur twice weekly then this is a monitoring process. This could also apply to ‘visual’ checking of a component.

Measurement
The size or scale of an event is measured, calculated or estimated with a numerical value assigned. e.g. weighing wastes sent to landfill; the amount of gas or electricity consumed per week, measuring noise levels, etc.

Continual improvement

Continual improvements mean conducting internal audits, looking at objectives, performing management reviews, analysing data, and implementing corrective and preventive actions.
For example, an environmental objective can be to reduce electrical energy consumption.

There are various common fundamentals between ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001 and ISO 27001. E.g. Document control, management review, , corrective action and the requirement for competent personnel. According to Annex SL, a new high-level structure, you can combine these standards into a single joint system.

Benefits of Integrated Management Systems

• Integrated Management Systems will have a constructive impact on the outcomes of the ISO Management Systems.
• will be able to align common components of management system standards. E.g. policies, objectives, processes and resources. Also, you may be able to have a single procedure for, document control, management reviews, training, internal audits or improvements.
• Maintaining the system will become easy to understand. Therefore, there will be more focus on achieving objectives that are central to the organisation.
• Organisations will be able to have a systematic approach to changes. Therefore, decision making will be more comfortable.
• Organisations will be able to conduct integrated audits and assessments. Therefore, optimise processes and resources. And will result in less interruption and thus decrease costs.
• Resources will focus on process implementation and add value rather than additional system maintenance.
• Will require less maintenance for continuing compliance checks to ensure that you are maintaining the management system standards requirements. Therefore, there will be more focus on improvements rather than maintaining multiple systems.

What is Annex SL?

Annex SL a new high-level structure for all ISO Management System Standards in future.

Annex SL is not an ISO standard. However, it is a guide to help  ISO consultants and organisations to implement multiple/integrated (MMS/IMS) Management Systems Standards. Over the years, ISO has published several management system standards for areas of quality, environment, information security, health and safety and many more.  ISO management system standards share common fundamentals. However, they are not sufficiently aligned, so they were difficult to integrate at the implementation phase. The most significant disadvantage was the duplication of work. The guideline of Annex SL will help you to create a system that entails less maintenance and resources, e.g. producing one document or process instead of many.

“It is the publication of Annex SL (formerly ISO Guide 83) which outlines the framework for a generic management system. All new ISO Management System Standards (MSS) will follow to this framework, and all current MSS will migrate to the structure at their succeeding revision.

In future, all ISO Management System Standards (MSS) should be consistent and compatible - they will all have the same look and feel. Annex SL guidelines could be the commencement of the end of the conflicts, duplication, confusion and misunderstanding arising from slightly different requirements across the various ISO Management System Standards.”

Reference IRCA briefing note Annex SL

Annex SL (a high-level structure ) is created to incorporate more than one ISO standard. Several organisations seek to implement and certify multiple management system standards such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001 and ISO 45001. Implementation of more than one standard has led to the necessity to combine or integrate them effectively and efficiently. Annex SL (a high-level structure ) helps the organisations to incorporate these standards. Annex SL defines the outline for a conventional ISO Management System.

The Annex SL structure and commonly used terms and definitions will make it easier to comply with and maintain the ISO standards requirements with less time and at a lower cost.
The most popular standards using Annex SL are:

• ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System (QMS)
• ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System (EMS)
• ISO 27001 Information technology Management System (ISMS)
• ISO 45001:2018 Occupational Health & Safety Management System Standard (OHSMS)

At Forefront, we believe that certification should add value to your organisation. We are not merely offering a compliance audit, however, by also maintaining a commitment to impartiality, we will dedicate our expertise towards your business, so you feel your accomplishment of achieving certification means something and not just a badge on the wall.

At Forefront, we commit to fixed daily rates with no hidden fees. However, we calculate the number of days according to the UKAS specified guidelines which depend on the scope (What exactly you do) and the size of the organisation (e.g. the number of employees and number of shifts and sites).