All About ISO

It’s kind of strange listing an EMS document as one of the musts to successfully obtain ISO 14001 certification of an environmental management system (EMS) when the ISO14001 standard doesn’t actually require an EMS manual to be developed. Sure there is the requirement to develop documentation as part of your ISO 14001 program (quite a lot of documentation in fact), but there is actually no requirement to develop an EMS manual. So why develop one?   The same reason we document all sorts of things for regulatory agencies, financial auditors, and others. How are you going to demonstrate to a certification auditor that your ISO 14001 EMS program meets the standard during a 5-day certification audit? Is he going to be able to interview every one of your employees and observe the implementation of all of your environmental practices and procedures? No. He is going to rely on the documentation that has been prepared that outlines your EMS and lists all of the elements of your EMS. This is the EMS manual. He is going to use it as a road map to understand how your organization handles environmental concerns and compare it to the ISO 14001 standard to see if it includes all of the required elements. Then as part of the audit he will observe how you are implementing your EMS and conduct employee interviews as appropriate.