Since its first publication in 1996, ISO 14001:2004, Environmental management systems – Requirements and Guide, has been adopted by more than 250 000 certified users in 155 countries all over the world , providing companies with a powerful management tool for the improvement of environment performances.
All ISO standards are reviewed every five years to establish if a revision is required to keep it current and relevant for the marketplace. ISO 14001 is currently at the Draft International Stage (DIS), the fourth stage of a six stage process, whereby anyone who is interested can submit feedback to the experts on the technical committee that is revising the standard.
The main changes in the new project emphasize the risk management. There is also a change of accent regarding the continuous improvement, from the improvement of the management system to the improvement of the environment performance. There is an increased prominence of environmental management within the organization’s strategic planning processes. To ensure the success of the system, a new clause has been added that assigns specific responsibilities for those in leadership roles to promote environmental management within the organization. The development of a communications strategy with equal emphasis on external and internal communications has been added.
In the new version of the standard the expectation on organizations has been expanded to commit to proactive initiatives to protect the environment from harm and degradation. Reflecting the evolution of computer and cloud based systems for running management systems, the revision incorporates the term ‘documented information’, instead of ‘documents’ and ‘records’. To align with ISO 9001, the organization will retain the flexibility to determine when ‘procedures’ are needed to ensure effective process control.
Once all comments have been considered and the draft is approved, it will move into the Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) stage before publication.
The revised ISO 14001 standard is due to be published by the end of 2015.
Organizations are granted a three-year transition period after the revision has been published to migrate their environmental management system to the new edition of the standard. After this transition period, companies that opt for third party certification will have to seek certification to the new version of the standard. The former version, ISO 14001:2004, and any certification to it, will be out of date.
Source: ISO