"With growing concerns about climate change and sustainability, a business is now expected to manage its impact on the environment."

Organisations are responding in various ways: Many leading companies publish environmental and sustainability reports - demonstrating to stakeholders that they are addressing those issues.

The most tangible evidence of an organisation's environmental focus and effort is to have a certified management system based on the ISO14001 international standard. Such a management system would need to include elements familiar to those that may already have a quality management system e.g. setting policies and objectives, employee training, control of documents and records, internal audits, incident / exception reporting, management review etc. ISO14001 can apply to all types and sizes of organisations, and include controls on products, services, activities, transport and other aspects of a business.

Benefits of an EMS (Environmental management system) might include:

• Improved identification of environmental impacts
• Reductions in waste
• Reductions in energy consumption
• More efficient use of material and resources
• Improved corporate image / Assurance to stakeholders.
• Access to markets - in some industry sectors, an ISO14001-compliant EMS is increasingly becoming a requirement to tender for major projects

In view of the above, there are more and more organisations looking to implement an EMS that complies with ISO14001. The issue is; how to create an intelligent solution that doesn't present a large administrative burden?

Solutions to help you

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"Qudos 3 is a powerful solution for the effective long-term operation of an environmental (EMS) or integrated management system"

Qudos 3 offers a proven, intelligent solution - Helping you to set up your EMS quickly, and run it effectively. With advanced technology, it offers multi-site/off-site capability, and superior functionality to:

• Plan Objectives/targets and how they will be achieved
• Manage important documents such as policies, procedures, and emergency plans
• Schedule and record internal audits
• Plan and record minutes of management review or committee meetings
• Maintain records of environmental training
• Assess performance of your environment-related activities - or those of your suppliers / contractors
• Consider environmental aspects, and assess their impacts
• Plan preventive / corrective / improvement action and then assign, record and track those actions.

A key strength of Qudos 3 lies in its integration of many elements of a management system in one application. It also facilitates the possibility of an integrated management system - combining environmental management with other compliance issues including OHS and Quality.

This article summarises the correspondence between Qudos 3 and ISO 14001, and serves to illustrate how comprehensively it can help you address that standard.
  Addressing ISO14001 with Qudos 3(54kB).

Qudos Internal Auditor Training can help you take a risk-based approach to achieve better outcomes from your EMS internal audit programme, and make the most cost-effective use of resources.