ISO14 -- Setting the Standard in Environmental Management

To ensure that your EMS is well understood and operating as designed, you must provide adequate information to the people doing the work. There also may be external parties that want to understand how your EMS is designed and implemented, such as customers, regulators, lending institutions, registrars and the public. For these reasons, the various processes that make up your EMS should be documented.

The EMS Manual
A "road map" or description that summarizes how the pieces of the EMS fit together can be a very useful tool. This roadmap generally takes the form of an EMS manual.

An EMS manual is a series of explanations of the processes your organization implements to conform to the EMS criteria (such as the elements discussed in the Guide). While you don't need to maintain a single "manual" that contains all of your EMS documentation, you should maintain a summary of the EMS that:

Describes the system's core elements (and how the elements relate to

each other)

Provides direction to related documentation.

Other EMS Documentation
In addition to the EMS manual, your organization should maintain other documentation of its EMS.

First, you should document the processes used to meet the EMS criteria. This documentation generally takes the form of system procedures. In addition, you might maintain area- or activity-specific documentation (such as work instructions) that instructs employees on how to carry out certain operations or activities.

EMS documentation is related to (but not the same as) EMS records. EMS documentation describes what your system consists of (i.e., what you do and how you do it), while EMS records demonstrate that you are doing what the documentation said you would do. Document control and records management are discussed later in this Guide.

You can maintain EMS documentation either on paper or electronically. There may be some advantages to maintaining documents electronically, such as ease of updating, controlling access, and ensuring that all readers are using the most up-to-date versions of documents.

Step: 9 of 17