Significant changes to the standard are expected, mainly due to the new common structure of ISO management system standards. A first draft for comments will be ready early 2013. Release of the International Standard is tentatively scheduled for January 2015.
The environmental management system standard ISO 14001 is currently under revision with the following mandate:
The revision shall be based on the new ISO High Level Structure that has recently been developed by ISO to provide a new and common framework to be used for all new and revised ISO management system standards. This structure is defined in Annex SL (Appendix 3) of ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1.
The revision shall ensure the retention and improvement of the basic principles and requirements of ISO 14001:2004.
Key points and direction
The new structure will most likely imply the biggest changes, and discussions are to a large extent focused on how to integrate environmental specific text into the new structure.
The new format includes the concept of more strategic level considerations of issues affecting the EMS, including influences from interested parties. This is additional to the usual identification of environmental aspects related to activities, products and services.
Almost all existing requirements will be continued and re-distributed into the new format. Currently there are question-marks on two specific issues which appear to be weak in the new format:
- How to deal with ?Preventive actions??
- To what extent will documented information and procedures be required (also taking into account that this is important to keep it verifiable)?
Most of the Future Challenges Study Group Recommendations are likely to be incorporated in the new ISO 14004 guidance document rather than in the ISO 14001 and the aim of the standard to provide continual improvement of environmental performance will be highlighted. In addition, the need for performance evaluation will most likely be strengthened.
