Background
Compliance obligations (COs) consist of the legal and non legal requirements that an organisation must follow. If an organisation has a certified environmental management system (EMS), it is essential that it evaluates the organisation against COs, being a requirement of the ‘performance evaluation’ clause of ISO 14001. A common way of evaluation is to conduct an audit or series of audits to check compliance. It is a task that I have completed many times over the years so I thought I would share my thoughts on best practice when carrying out this specific but common type of environmental audit.
Knowing your trade
Environmental management in organisations is strongly underpinned by law. Having a good knowledge of environmental law is therefore essential to a budding CO auditor. This can be gained in numerous ways such as attending or delivering training courses and carrying out legal work such as preparing and updating CO registers, preparing operational procedures or completing permit applications. I find legal audits quite technical in comparison to other environmental audits I’ve completed as law can sometimes be complex and difficult to grasp. A detailed knowledge of it is therefore essential.
Preparation is key
The scope of CO auditing varies from auditing against one law to considering all that apply to organisations. Particularly for the latter, being able to understand what applies is important to ensure that the audit is conducted efficiently, and the key issues are considered. During the audit preparation phase it is therefore important to determine what parts of a law apply, and gain audit evidence rather than cover a lot of issues with the auditee that are not going to be relevant. As CO can be complex compared to other audit criteria, good preparation is key. Having a detailed checklist is likely to be important to ensure that all relevant CO issues are covered.
Continuing professional development
Environmental law, particularly in the UK, is a rapidly evolving and fast-growing area. It is therefore essential that auditors keep abreast of new legal requirements as they are introduced. Even if the organisation being audited possesses a CO register, it cannot always be guaranteed that the register is up to date due to the rapid turnover of environmental law. CPD is important for all environmental management issues, but particularly so for environmental law.
Linking practical measures to law
Compliance with environmental law can sometimes be achieved in many ways. It is important therefore to have skills to able to link control measures that be implemented by an organisation to CO compliance. For example, in the UK there is a ‘duty of care’ for waste and this law states something along the lines that waste should not be able to escape from an organisation. Practically this can be achieved in many ways such as using the correct types of skips, secondary containment and security etc. It is important to understand that these practical measures, or the lack of them, can be linked directly to CO compliance particularly where the controls to achieve compliance are vague or non-existent in law. Conversely, some laws are much more specific and as such much easier to audit. For example there are regulations in the UK that require secondary containment for oil storage tanks with a capacity of 200 litres to have impermeable secondary containment, so the practical implementation is much easier to check.
Final Note
CO auditing in comparison to other types of environmental audit requires a good knowledge of environmental law, as well as keeping up to date with changes in law. Preparation is key and skills must be developed to link what is seen on-site to a specific law.
John Binns BSc (Hons), MSc, MIEMA
John Binns BSc (Hons) MSc MIEMA is an experienced environmental tutor and consultant
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