ISO 14001 Readiness Audit

This audit sits between the registers that feed it and the findings that come out of it. Its common misuse is being asked to do the work of the instrument on either side, producing a document too shallow to certify against and too broad to act on.

ISO 14001 is unusual in having a second audience. The certification body checks whether the system meets the standard; the environmental regulator checks whether the site meets its permit, and does not care about the standard at all. The clauses that matter most here are the ones where both look at the same evidence.

No jurisdiction requires ISO 14001. All of them require the underlying environmental compliance, usually through permits with numeric limits and reporting duties, which is why scoring clause 6.1.3 generously stores up a problem with a regulator rather than with a certification body.

The template produces three percentages and a recommendation. Whether the audit was worth running is decided by four judgements made while it is in progress, none of which appear as a score.

The findings below are the ones certification bodies raise most often at stage 2 on environmental systems, and almost all are visible to an honest readiness audit first.

A packaging plant booked its initial ISO 14001 certification and ran this readiness audit ten weeks out. Context, scope, policy and leadership all scored fully met. The aspects register was thorough, over two hundred entries, and contractor control scored fully met on the strength of a well-organised pack with environmental clauses in every subcontract. Readiness came out at eighty-eight per cent, the likely outcome pass with minors, and the recommendation was to proceed.

Six weeks later a contractor jet-washing the yard before the audit discharged the washings, carrying oil and residue from the compactor bay, into a surface water drain. The site had no current drainage plan, so nobody knew that drain went to the watercourse rather than to foul. The regulator attended, took samples and opened an enquiry. At stage 2 the certification body raised majors against clauses 6.1.2 and 8.1.

The register had two hundred entries and none concerned yard drainage, because it was built from the process flow diagram and the diagram started at goods-in. Contractor control scored fully met because the auditor assessed paperwork rather than watching a contractor work. Both gaps were findable in the readiness audit: one by walking the drains with the register in hand, the other by standing in the yard for twenty minutes. The corrective action was a drainage survey, a register rebuilt from a site walk, and environmental conditions moved into the permit to work.

The audit is a day's work. What fails around it is the aspects register nobody revisits when the site changes, the permit condition living in an inbox, and the gap marked closable that then is not.

KnowEnviro

Holds the aspects and obligations registers against the site's permits and consents, and flags obligations with no monitoring record behind them.

KnowComply

Places the audit in the programme, tracks each gap to a CAPA with an owner and a date, and keeps the evidence set assembled for the visit.

KnowContractor

Carries environmental conditions into contractor approval and the permit to work, so operational control reaches the person doing the job in the yard.

Ella

Watches the weeks remaining against open gaps, escalates the ones not closable before the external date, and pulls last cycle's findings into scope.

Environmental aspect

An element of an organisation's activities, products or services that interacts or can interact with the environment, such as a discharge, an emission or a waste stream.

Environmental impact

The change to the environment resulting from an aspect. The aspect is what the site does; the impact is what happens as a result.

Significant aspect

An aspect that can have a significant impact, determined by criteria the organisation sets itself, and the trigger for operational control under clause 8.1.

Compliance obligation

A legal requirement the organisation must comply with, plus other requirements it chooses or is obliged to meet, such as customer commitments.

Lifecycle perspective

Consideration of the stages of a product or service from raw material acquisition to end of life, so far as the organisation can control or influence them.

Abnormal condition

A foreseeable operating state outside normal running, such as start-up, shutdown, maintenance or bypass, which must be covered when aspects are determined.

Operational control

The controls applied to significant aspects, including engineered controls, procedures and requirements placed on external providers.

Compliance evaluation

The planned, recorded check of performance against each compliance obligation, so the organisation maintains knowledge of its compliance status.