Introduction

By now you will have carried out the following items in the project plan:

• You will have written the Register of Environmental Aspects, Register of Environmental Legislation, Operating Procedures and the Environmental Management Manual.

• The first Environmental Management Review Meeting has been held.

• The Environmental Management System (EMS) has been launched and implemented.

• Auditors have been selected, trained, and internal auditing has started.

Now is the time to choose a certification body to carry out your assessment.

Choosing an Assessor

If you are already registered to ISO 9001, your first thought will probably be to go to your current assessor, who will very likely by now also be accredited to assess ISO 14001. Do not think you must go to the same certification body; however you will probably save money in the longer term if your quality and environmental systems are assessed by the same people. The certification bodies are trying whenever possible to dual-skill their assessors so that, when it comes to surveillance visits, one person can look at both environmental and quality systems at the same time. This will be particularly helpful if you have succeeded in integrating your systems to any extent as described in Chapters 4, 7, 8 and 14. However, because it is now straightforward to change from one certification body to another, I would recommend that you consider seeking quotes for environmental assessment and on-going surveillance of both environmental and quality systems from one or two other certification bodies as well as...