New Legal Register Design for ISO 14001 9.3 and OHSAS 18001 Compliance

By Jonathan Brun, September 30th, 2015

Nimonik is happy to announce a brand new design for Legal Registers, otherwise known as Legal Profiles or Requirements for Compliance.

In ISO 14001:2004, 4.3.2 Legal and Other Requirements requires two key elements from an organization, broadly summarized as follows:

This is a requirement for a procedure that explains how the organization obtains information regarding its legal and other requirements, and makes that information known to key functions within the organization.

The intent of this element is to identify the environmental legal and other requirements that pertain to its operations and activities so that the organization can ensure that they are taken into account in the EMS. In doing so, the organization must also determine how these requirements apply to the significant aspects.

In the new ISO 14001:2015 (October 2014 Revision), this requirement has been moved to 6.1.3 and 9.3 and it states

6.1.3 Compliance obligations

The organization shall:

a) identify and have access to the compliance obligations related to its environmental aspects;

b) determine how these compliance obligations apply to the organization.

The organization shall maintain documented information of its compliance obligations.

9.3 Management review

Top management shall review the organization’s environmental management system, at planned intervals, to ensure its continuing suitability, adequacy and effectiveness.The management review shall include consideration of:

a) the status of actions from previous management reviews; react to the nonconformity and, as applicable:

changes in:

external and internal issues that are relevant to the environmental management system;
compliance obligations;
its significant environmental aspects and risk associated with threats and opportunities; the extent to which objectives have been met;
information on the organization’s environmental performance, including trends in:
- nonconformities and corrective actions;
- monitoring and measurement results;
- conformity to its compliance obligations;
- audit results;
  communication(s) from external interested parties;
  opportunities for continual improvement;
  the adequacy of resources required for maintaining an effective environmental management system.

A slideshow we produced summarizes how these requirements can be handled in a streamlined way, but below are some screenshots of the new legal registers that allow you to manage your requirements to demonstrate your compliance obligations. With Nimonik you can access regulations for over 65 countries and then quickly organize them into your business activities. Nimonik also offers services to build your legal registers and to conduct gap analysis on your existing list of environmental and health and safety regulatory requirements.

The Nimonik system then keeps you up to date and allows you to demonstrate to third party auditors that your legal register is both accurate and current. When a new regulations is introduced that might affect you, it is proposed in green. When a change to a compliance obligation occurs, it is highlighted in yellow and you can review it.

Truly, the best way to understand how Nimonik can help you streamline your obligation requirements is to participate in one of our free webinars or contact our team at info@nimonik.com for a personal conversation about your business requirements.