Certification

Certification Bodies

EMAS and ISO 14001 are externally verified EMS standards and therefore specified bodies need to be able to assess an organization's system for certification to the standards.

All those involved in the certification will need adequate knowledge of the standard; beyond this the management need to be able to assemble an assessment team that is appropriate for a particular certification. Not all certifiers will have the expertise necessary to certify all organizations across the whole range of industry and service sectors, therefore they will be limited in their accreditation scope. The assessors must, as a minimum, comply with the ISO standard on qualification criteria for auditors or the draft ISO standard on qualification criteria for environmental auditors.

Further guidance on the certification team is given in a non-prescriptive way and expertise may include knowledge in three key areas: environmental aspects, technical knowledge and management systems.

Certification Procedures

Several important issues are raised in the certification procedure:

Significant Environmental Aspects

EMS's require organizations to identify their environmental aspects and decide which of these are significant. The certification bodies may not challenge an organization's view of what is a significant aspect directly, but they have a duty to establish that the basis on which the operator determines what environmental aspects are significant is sound.

Continual / Continuous improvement

There is the requirement that an organization make a commitment to continual/continuous improvement; this should be the fundamental focus of the certification process.

Indirect environmental aspects

Both direct and indirect aspects of an organization's activities must be considered. The guidance available to certifiers on this subject states that they should confirm that an operator's activity with regard to suppliers and customers relates appropriately to all environmental aspects, including indirect aspects and their significance.

Integration with quality management

Some organizations that already have quality management systems may wish to have a certification system that assesses all their management systems at the same time. Where this is the case the certification body can "review at one time a single unified system against two standards." However, the major differences between quality and environmental management system goals must be taken into account so that the system is fully assessed against the two standards.

Regulatory compliance

The certifier must ensure that the organization's system records any non-compliance with legislation, regulations or permits and that appropriate corrective action is taken.

Post-certification surveillance

Once an organization has achieved certification, continuing surveillance must be carried out by the certification body.