ISO 50001 gives organizations the requirements for energy management systems (EnMS).

ISO 50001 provides benefits for organizations large and small, in both public and private sectors, in manufacturing and services, in all regions of the world.

ISO 50001 will establish a framework for industrial plants; commercial, institutional, and governmental facilities; and entire organizations to manage energy. Targeting broad applicability across national economic sectors, it is estimated that the standard could influence up to 60 % of the world’s energy use.*

Here is a link for additional information on ISO 50001 http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_50001_energy.pdf.

Call us at 920-648-4134 to discuss how ISO 50001 can help your organization improve sustainability performance.

As non-financial sustainability performance information is relied upon to make important decisions about investment and other business relationships, assurance of organizations sustainability performance assertions will become more common. An important question is who will do this assurance work? Recognizing opportunity the financial accounting profession is hard at work tooling up to fill this emerging niche http://www.ifac.org/publications-resources/ifac-sustainability-framework-20

The confidences stakeholders can place in the results of an assurance engagement are directly proportional to the competence of those performing the audits. It will be interesting to see how the bean counters do at assessing environmental, health, safety and social performance as they endeavor to to learn the practice in this market.

If you are planning an internal audit I would consider using a process approach where you audit many of the clauses almost simultaneously in each department or functional area of the organization. The following is an example of a line of questioning you might consider when you are interviewing employees in a Maintenance Department (MD).

Auditor: What are some important environmental aspects of the maintenance department?
MD: We clean and paint equipment used in the mine so we generate solvent waste and we have air emissions from the spray paint operations.

Comment: If the aspects match those on the record required by 4.3.1 you have some evidence of conformance to 4.3.1 and 4.4.2. If you see parts cleaning operations and painting operations being performed but these have not been identified as environmental aspects you may have nonconformity to 4.3.1. If these aspects have been identified but the MD representative you interview has no idea about what an aspect is or any of the impacts from parts cleaning or painting you may have nonconformity to 4.4.2.

Auditor: How do you make sure that waste solvents are handled properly?
MD: There are some important laws we must comply with for these waste solvents and we follow our Waste Solvent work instruction.

Comment: You now have some evidence that they have identified the legal requirements 4.3.2 and have established operational controls of significant aspects 4.4.6.

Auditor: This section of the Waste Solvent work instruction says the waste solvent storage area will be inspected weekly and the results recorded on the inspection sheet. Can you show me a record of the inspection that was performed 2 weeks ago?
MD: Sure here it is.

Comment: With this question you are looking for evidence of Operational Control 4.4.6, Monitoring and Measurement 4.5.1, Internal Audit 4.5.5 and Record 4.5.4. You could even get Corrective Action 4.5.3 if problems are found during the inspections which were corrected.

Auditor: Can you tell me about what you do if you see a fire somewhere in the facility
MD: We have been trained in proper use of fire extinguishes so if I think I can put the fire out I will try. No matter what, I will call the designated emergency coordinator who will follow-up and I will evacuate to my designated assembly area in the parking lot across the street.

Comment: Here is evidence of 4.4.7 and 4.4.2 and maybe 4.4.3.

The potential audit trails you can follow in a department are almost endless and each trail should be able to give you evidence for one or more clauses of the standard.

 We also cleared the last pre-application hurdle and should begin the ANSI ASQ National Accreditation Board application review and approval process within the next few weeks.

Bad news from audits is actually good news for management! The audit findings give management the opportunity to act (create incentive for change). Hopefully that change will correct the bad news situation discovered during the audit.

No News is Bad News. Organizations not performing audits have no means to assess the effectiveness of the management system. They are not getting information feedback about the organizations EH&S performance.

I encourage organizations to continue to audit even if they struggle to correct all the problems discovered. At some point the light bulb will turn on and the organization will recognize they have a problem with the corrective action process and hopefully figure out a fix.

This is a common situation with many large industrial operations where several plants are contiguous, use a common wastewater treatment facility or obtain energy from other parts of the organization where it is generated. The key is to carefully define the Scope of the EMS to only include those activities that are under the direct control of the organization implementing the EMS.

One of our clients in the paper industry has a similar situation. They are leasing a portion of a large paper making complex to make something called paperboard. Portions of the leased property are covered under the landlords Tier 1 NPDES Storm Water Discharge Permit and addressed in the SWPPP. The landlord has stipulated in the lease agreement that our client needs to comply with the terms of the SWPPP and we incorporated the conditions of the SWPPP that apply into the EMS as an “other requirement”.

The organizations is certified by an ANAB accredited Certification Body which has accepted our interpretation of the SWPPP as an “other legal requirement”. Again the real key here is to carefully define the Scope of the EMS (4.1) to limit it to the physical areas and process that the organization can control.

Also see – 4.3.1 a) to identify the environmental aspects of its activities, products and services within the defined scope of the environmental management system that it can control and those that it can influence …..

OV-104 in Flight (NASA Photo)

Recently we delivered an internal auditor training course at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) near Orlando, Florida. The two day ISO 14001 Internal Auditor course was delivered to a group of 17 NASA employees and KSC contractors. The classroom was within walking distance of the enormous Vehicle Assembly Building, the tallest one story building in the world.

We had a few hours before and after the course and the NASA folks gave us a wonderful behind the screens tour of the Orbiter Service Building where we were able to walk around directly beneath the Orbiter Atlantis (OV-104) as it was being serviced after its recent mission (STS-135). We also visited the Vehicle Assembly Building where the Orbiter Endeavor (OV-105) was being prepared for transport to the California Science Center. Apparently Atlantis is to remain at the KSC in “partial readiness” to fly again, which was the buzz around KSC during our visit. We also got a tour of the recently constructed LEED Platinum Certified NASA Propellants North building which has received several awards for its design.

Endeavour at VSB 10/24/2011

The training course we developed and delivered was specially designed to incorporate the elements of EO13423 and the KSC EMS documentation. The two day training helped refresh NASA internal auditor understanding of effective methods for performing value added process audits. The wide variety of processes and potential environmental impacts at KSC make internal auditing of the NASA operations and contractors especially challenging.

We are planning another trip to KSC to perform Phase II of the training. This phase will involve students participating in an actual internal audit at KSC. This 2 day process based EMS audit will demonstrate process audit techniques and coach NASA internal auditors in planning, implementing and reporting phases of effective internal audits

Here is a link to more information on our Internal Auditor Training courses.

I have been trying to assess whether the criteria used in these newer measures of performance are on a path to eclipse the ISO standards or if the ISO standards will become an important part of these reporting and indexing products especially the assurance parts. I sometimes wonder if a parallel assessment process with its own set of performance criteria is coming that will make the ISO standards obsolete and with it the certification body accreditation process IAF and ISO certification business.

What are your thoughts? Is ISO gaining credibility as a measure of an organizations performance or are the common myths we hear about ISO so deeply entrenched and stakeholder confidence eroded to the point that the world is likely to seek other methods to assess organizations performance rather than ISO and IAF.

The result of inept aspect identification will inevitably be an ineffective EMS. Do yourself and your organizations a favor and get professional help from someone who has done it many times. There are a zillion mediocre EMS consultants that will charge much and deliver little. Do your home work and check their references before you invest in their assistance.

Also, there are serious drawbacks to using a risk based approach to determining which environmental aspects are significant. A better outcome and more effective EMS will be achieved by establishing significance criteria (filters) for aspects such as:

1. Is the aspect regulated?

2. Is there potential for a significant impact from an unplanned release?

3. Are their other interested parties that care about the aspect like neighbors?

4. Is it costing lots of money to manage the aspect?

5. Is the scale or duration of the impact such that we should manage the aspect?

If an aspect is found to meet one of the criteria (gets caught on one of the filters) it should be considered significant or important to the organization and managed by the EMS (controlled, improved or both). If it passes all of the filters it should be considered insignificant or irrelevant to the organizations and ignored by the EMS.