A Detailed Guide on Steps to Get an ISO 14001 Certification

Summary:

This article helps you understand the key steps you need to follow to achieve an ISO 14001 certification for your business.

Businesses across multiple spheres have become quite serious when it comes to lowering the rate of adverse effects on the environment caused by their operational processes. On one side, mitigating environmental degradation caused by various organizational activities is important. On the other hand, demonstrating the commitment of your organization towards promoting a healthier environment in front of the stakeholders is important as well. With all these considerations, the ISO 14001 certification was introduced.

ISO 14001: A Brief Overview

This standard offers a holistic overview of the type of business activities that contribute to massive environmental degradation, techniques, and practices to be implemented to lessen the environmental impact, track the improvements being made, and more. Being developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ISO 14001 offers you the framework required for it to implement an efficient Environmental Management System (EMS) in the smoothest manner possible.

Developing an EMS as per the guidelines of this crucial ISO standard isn’t easy. Hence it is always recommended to seek professionalized guidance from qualified consultants to get through the steps of implementing an ISO 14001 compliant EMS. Here is a detailed summary of the essential steps to attain an ISO 14001 certification.

Step 1 - Seeking management support: Getting management support isn’t always easy when it comes to bringing a significant change in the way your business works. While taking a note of this you must prepare a convincing pitch which will help them understand the benefits your organization will be able to avail by getting an ISO 14001 standard certification.

Step 2 - Listing down the legal requirements: The next step compels you to take account of the various legal obligations you need to cover to implement an EMS successfully.

Step 3 - Defining the scope of your EMS: In this step, you need to strategically focus on narrowing the scope of the EMS which, will clear up how you should ideally proceed and what your limitations are. This would also help you exclude the specific areas that don’t have any direct or indirect effect on our environment. What you need to outline the scope of your EMS are mainly the environmental aspects which, specify how your organizational activities are influencing the environment and the environmental policy.

Step 4 – Outlining the procedures and processes of your EMS: This step requires you to list all the procedures and processes which you must perform on a consistent basis to attain desirable results while mitigating or reducing the level of environmental impacts, along with the steps you need to follow while responding to different types of emergency situations.

Step 5 – Implementing the procedures and processes of your EMS: After you’ve defined all the processes you need to incorporate to implement a systematic EMS, it’s time for you to synchronize these processes with the existing processes such as waste tracking in your operational unit and more. As it is not necessary for you to document all the procedures involved, it becomes highly important for you to have a fair understanding of which particular ones you need to document to prevent environmental degradation.

Step 6 – Organizing training and awareness sessions: All your employees must undergo a comprehensive training program to get an overview of ISO 14001 and its purpose. With adequate training, they should be able to understand the various measures you need to incorporate to lessen the adverse impact on the environment and how they should be conducted efficiently. Giving complete information to each and every associate of your organization on why you are implementing an ISO 14001 adherent EMS is of paramount importance indeed.

Step 7 – Selecting the right certification body: Choosing an experienced and diligent certification body that will audit the EMS of your organization and evaluate whether it is compliant to the requirements of ISO 14001 is what the next step is all about. You should ideally interview some of the topmost certification bodies to choose the right one for your organization.

Step 8 – Employing the EMS and tracking its performance: After you have chosen the certification body, you should try to evaluate the performance of the EMS and try to collect records, which you might need during the audit. The records will help you understand whether the processes are effective or not and what kind of further improvements need to be made.

Step 9 – Conducting internal audits: As mostly advised by the certification body, it is important for you to audit all the processes related to your EMS internally before proceeding with the certification audit. This in turn, will offer you the scope to check whether all the processes are working in sync to the objectives being previously set and haven’t being deviated. In case of any deviations found, you must take necessary steps to fix the issues accordingly.

Step 10 – Conducting the management review: Apart from the consent of your management in implementing an ISO 14001 compliant EMS, it is also important for you to ensure their fair participation in the course of its continual maintenance. To ensure that adequate resources are available for continual effectiveness and improvement of all the EMS-relevant processes, the higher management needs to have a look on the specified data being collected from the EMS activities and react to the same accordingly.

Step 11 – Setting up corrective actions: To resolve the problems and improve the EMS further, it is important for you to set up and execute corrective measures which involve identifying the root causes of problems and uprooting them efficiently. With regular performance tracking, management review, and internal audits, these problems will be identified.

Step 12 – Certification audit (Stage 1): In this step, the certification body will review all the documents you have prepared and verify them on paper. They will be issuing a report where details on the areas you have been able to comply successfully and problems to be resolved further will be mentioned. This would actually offer you a chance to implement some corrective steps to mitigate the raised issues.

Step 12 – Certification audit (Stage 2): Being the last step, here the certification body will be doing the on-site audit while reviewing all the collected records related to EMS processes; including data of management review, internal audit, and corrective measures. Once, this audit is complete, they will issue a report covering all their findings and stating whether your EMS is working effectively and compliant to the ISO 14001 requirements or not. They will further recommend your organization for the certification if all the requirements are being met. However, in the case that any non-conformances are found, necessary steps need to be taken accordingly to achieve the certification.

The bottom line

Achieving an ISO 14001 certification for your business comes with an array of possibilities for you. Starting with reducing the negative impact of your business operations on the environment, promoting environmentally safe organizational activities, and demonstrating how committed your entity is in fostering overall environmental harmony and sustainability. It will help your business scale up to the newer heights of success indeed. So, get in touch with experienced consultants to acquire extensive knowledge on how to proceed with the process of getting your business ISO 14001 certified.

Author bio:

Damon Anderson is one of the most competent ISO consultants who has earned profound knowledge in helping businesses attain different types of ISO certifications including the ISO 14001 certification, ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 13485, and more. Go read more of his insightful blogs and articles on various industry-related topics now.

Damon Anderson is the director of an ISO certification consultancy which advises businesses in different sectors to achieve a required ISO certification easily.