Operational Planning and Control
Clause 8.1 of the requirements states that organizations are responsible to create, administer, control and maintain all process needed to meet their EMS, which includes actions that were defined in Clause 6. For an organization to do this they must:
- Create operating principles for the process
- Put into action controls of the process in conformity of the operating principles
The organization is responsible for controlling planned changes and also review potential consequences of unintended changes. Organizations must mitigate any adverse effects as necessary. Additionally, the organization must also secure that outsourced processes are controlled or influenced. When creating the EMS, the type of control of influence to be applied should be defined.
The operation planning and control defined must be persistent with ISO 14001:2026 life cycle perspective, this should take into consideration:
- Create controls in line with its environmental requirements to ensure that the design and development process for the product or service considers the life cycle stage
- Define the environmental requirements for the procurement of products and services
- Communicate all relevant environmental requirements to external providers which include contractors
- Consider the need to provide information in regard to the end-of-life treatment of products and services with consideration in, transportation, delivery, use, and final disposal
In order to ensure that your environmental policy is followed and that your goals are being met, certain operations and activities within your organization need to be controlled. Each organization is individual and are based on several factors such as activities, legal obligations, and significant operational controls. As a result of each organization having its own environmental policy and plan, they must decide the best way to compose and combine processes to secure that total operational control of its environmental aspects is achieved.
It is also critical that an organization considers what parts of their operational control process is necessary to record as documented information. Training methods and records are mandatory. It may be necessary that processes of any complexity may need to be documented as well in order to maintain operational control to provide consistent products or services in regard to the EMS.
MAKE ISO 14001 REGISTRATION SIMPLE AND FOOLPROOF!
Our All-in-One Certification Package is a proven, efficient system. It gives you all you need to prepare for registration – in one simple to use package.
