Download the ISO 14001 Requirements Checklist

The checklist is an Excel spreadsheet listing all requirements in the standard. You’ll find requirements covered for:

• Context (interested parties, issues, scope) (clause 4)
• Roles and responsibilities in regards to leadership (clause 5)
• Risk management framework, environmental aspects and compliance obligations (clause 6)
• Competence, awareness, communication and documented policies and procedures (clause 7)
• Environmental management processes, including change management and emergency responses (clause 8)
• Internal audit, evaluation of compliance and performance evaluation of your EMS (clause 9)
• Managing nonconformities and continuous improvement (clause 10)

ISO 14001 is an ISO standard about environmental sustainability, you can use the standard to build an Environmental Management System (EMS) that will help manage your environmental responsibilities. If you’re new to ISO 14001 and management system standards, read our blog What is ISO 14001?

We have extracted every instance of the word “shall” being used across the ISO/IEC 14001:2015 and entered it as a row in the checklist.

That means this requirements checklist covers 100% of the requirements in ISO 14001.

A gap analysis is useful if you already have several policies and procedures in place, for example if your organisation is already certified to other ISO or BS management system standards such as ISO 9001, ISO 27001 or ISO 45001.

If you’re not sure, download our ISO 14001 Requirements Checklist.  It will give you an idea of what the requirements are and whether you already have in place a good portion of what you’ll need.

If there are hardly any policies and procedures in place, a gap analysis could very well be a waste of money.  Just dive right into the implementation.

You can use it at the beginning of your implementation to perform a gap analysis and assess how much work you have to do. A gap analysis is useful if you already have a number of policies and procedures in place. For example, you might already have some of the core environmental policies and procedures in place or a risk management procedure.

You can also use the checklist to manage your ISO 14001 implementation project – it’s a complete list of all the requirements you need to meet so a good starting point as a project management tool.

Finally, it’s a good tool to do a final review just before your Stage 1 audit to make sure you have everything in place.

We use this requirements checklist at the very beginning of a consultancy engagement to find out what documentation and controls are already in place and determine how much work there is to do.

We use it during the implementation as a project plan, to keep track of progress, determine who’s responsible for doing what, determine where each requirement is documented or what evidence there is that it’s met.

Finally, we also use it just before an audit to list where everything is and verify that we’re ready. This spreadsheet is our core consultancy tool!

An ISO 14001 requirement is where the word “shall” is used in the text of the standard. 

The certification process for ISO 14001 requires two audits to take place, 2-3 months apart.

• The first audit (Stage 1) verifies that the documentation you have put in place conforms to the standard to make sure all requirements are covered;
• The second audit (Stage 2) verifies that the controls are in place and working, policies and procedures are adhered to and EMS activities are being tracked and implemented.