ISO Transition News

January 22, 2016

As you are aware ISO has completed a review of their Environmental (14001) and Quality (9001) standards and after a lengthy consultation period ISO launched both standards to the market in September 2015. Telarcs Audit team members have participated in an extensive training and examining process to ensure we are ready to support the roll out of the new standards.

The new standards bring to the table some exciting opportunities for our customers and beyond. In consultation with our partner SAI Global, we have extensively assessed the new standards. Our findings have identified that there are 3 key areas that will allow organisations to increasingly receive benefits through maintaining or adopting the ISO9001;2015 and ISO14001;2015 standards in their business;

  1. Risk management - Under the new ISO standard we at Telarc are now being tasked with providing you, our customers, with a more risk based perspective of what we are seeing as we conduct our assessments. We believe that the recently launched changes will result in us now being able to provide you with our traditional Management system based review as well as formally adding in a new section where we will provide observations on the way in which your organisation is identifying, quantifying and remediating risks associated with the processes that support the standard being assessed.
  2. Process management - In addition the traditional demand placed on you as an organisation to document to death the documentation requirements that underpin your management system have been relaxed somewhat. The end result of this, and its impact on your business, is entirely up to you, the customer. For most organisations having processes documented and assessed regularly is a very good discipline which has led to annual improvements in overall organisational performance. To this end it is our belief that most organisations we audit will continue to embrace the disciplines that ISO has created, over many years, and retain documentation of processes. But, in saying this, it is important that organisations understand that the need for providing the traditional levels of process documentation has been relaxed.
  3. Leadership increasingly Senior leaders, including Boards of Directors, are being held accountable for more than just Financial / Shareholder outcomes. ISO is moving its standards to reflect the shift by ensuring that all levels of the organisation engage (at their required level of influence i.e. Policy, Procedure, Task, Measurement, improvement etc.) to deliver a series of guidelines and subsequent activities that will optimise the public, the workers, and or interested parties, perception of an organisation. This is in particular relation to Worker safety, Product or Service quality and Environmental friendly work practices. To this end we will need to see active engagement by Senior Leaders as we start, conduct and complete our assessments. The level of engagement is not unilateral and mandatory, more it is what we request today with attendance at Opening and Closing meetings, along with possible input during points in the assessment where they can influence the outcome. To this end if you wish to establish the possible impact of the change you are advised to access Telarcs website and access our 9001 and 14001:2015 checklists.

You can view the checklists by clicking HERE

If you require some additional thoughts around how the above might impact the way your organisation conduct your annual assessment then please drop us an email and we will contact you.

The next, and probably the most important step, is how you go about booking in the audit that will result in your organisation transitioning from the 2008 standard/s to the 2015 standard/s. Plus, giving you a bit of an understanding on what the implications for you and your organisation might be.

Transition to the new standard/s is able to be arranged via 1 of 4 options;

  1. You are able to arrange to upgrade to the new standard/s to occur at your next triennial recertification assessment provided it is within the transition period (transition period ends September 2018).
  2. You are able to arrange to upgrade to the new standard/s to occur at your next review visit (RV) audit with extra duration.
  3. You are able to arrange an upgrade to the new standard/s over the next two surveillance audits with extra duration provided the surveillance audits are within the transition period.
  4. You are able to arrange to upgrade to the new standard/s mid-cycle with extra duration.

The extra duration will vary depending on the level of risk that your business is assessed at under Page 25 of MD5;2015. If your business is deemed high risk, via MD5, then the assessment time will vary according to the organisation but the expected additional time is likely to be between 0.5 and 1 day.. Those deemed medium or lower risk will require an additional 2-4 hours. For most of our customers it is our belief that those deemed medium to lower risk that the extra duration will able to be managed within existing day/s allocated to the audit.

In the case where your preference is to transition through extra duration then we will conduct an audit against the old standard/s and allow a period of 1 month to resolve any NCs. Any issues identified at the assessment will be raised as non-conformances. Non-conformances raised against the current 2008 version will have the normal clearance date requirements. Non-conformances raised against the 2015 standard will have an extended clearance date but must be addressed before the end of the transition period.

A very important point to note as we wind up our summary of the changes in the standard, please bear in mind that current certificates to ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 will expire in September 2018 so will no longer be valid.

We hope the above clearly sets out the options available for you as you contemplate your transition to the newly released ISO14001 and 9001 standards. If you wish to discuss your options further please take the time to get in touch with the scheduling team. See our contact page for our phone number