How to Use an ISO 14001 Surveillance Audit Checklist

For your ISO 14001 surveillance audit to go smoothly, everything must be in order. That means gathering documents and information for the auditor as well as making sure everyone required for an audit can attend on audit day.

Close any minor nonconformities found during a registration audit is also essential to success.

The Auditor’s Report
Once your business has undergone and passed an initial certification ISO 14001 audit, annual surveillance audits may be conducted – typically one or two days for low risk businesses – to make sure that your EMS continues to meet standards set out by its certification body and remains viable going forward.

Therefore, you must strive to get everything right and maintain effective internal audit and corrective action processes. Evidence of these will make a difference when an auditor’s report is issued following their visit.

Your auditor will assess any nonconformities discovered during the registration audit and observe how you are managing improvement activities outlined in clauses 4 through 10, including evidence of risk-based thinking and continuous improvement mindset. If this is achieved successfully, your EMS should be in great shape, making the surveillance audit straightforward to pass.

The Auditor’s Recommendations
Once your surveillance audit has passed, you can rest easy knowing that your EMS is compliant with ISO standards. But it’s important not to become complacent as there will be ongoing inspection visits to verify whether business processes continue meeting ISO requirements.

Your business’s surveillance audit schedule will depend on its industry and business risk profile; you should discuss this with your certification body; typically it ranges from one day per year for low risk businesses up to multiple days every six months for larger, higher risk operations.

Certainty Software makes internal inspections simpler and faster, enabling you to identify areas for improvement without incurring membership auto-renewals or contracts. Take the first step today – click here and begin your free trial of Xenia now.

The Auditor’s Actions
An EMS audit checklist used as a gap analysis tool when preparing for certification audit can identify areas of weakness within your systems that require improvement, from minor nonconformities to major ones that must be resolved.

if an auditor spots that air emissions aren’t being properly controlled, they will ask how the company has been classifying, monitoring and regulating these emissions as well as looking into any training that has been provided to handle these processes.

Review of your Environmental Management System’s policies and procedures will also take place as part of this audit, to make sure they continue to meet ISO requirements. This step is critical in showing compliance when it comes to the three-yearly reassessment audit that follows; thus illustrating why companies must carefully prepare for surveillance audits.

The Auditor’s Conclusions
The ISO 14001 surveillance audit aims to assess whether or not a company’s environmental management system (EMS) is working as intended and in line with ISO standards. Furthermore, it assesses any areas for improvement that might include minor non-conformities that were overlooked – leaving these unattended may result in major non-compliance later.

An effective surveillance audit requires evidence to demonstrate that the company’s EMS is functioning according to plan and still meets ISO 14001 standard requirements, which may include internal audits or reference back to initial certification audit findings.

Documentation must be clear and straightforward for readers. However, some commenters raised concerns that an unqualified requirement to record every step taken, evidence gathered and conclusions reached without permitting auditor judgment would lead to excessive documentation that did not improve audit quality. The Board acknowledged this concern.