What criteria should we consider when choosing ISO 14001 consultant?

Posted by Charles Wilson on November 25th, 2019

With the help of any external ISO 14001 consultant for your organizations to implement Environment management system that is the time to choose a best one person or we can say candidate. When choosing ISO 14001 consultant, there are many elements that evaluated such as from its consultancy fees to experience.

Generally, when signing a contract with any ISO 14001 Consultancy firm or any ISO 14001 consultant, you will obtain the knowledge and skills that your organization doesn’t have and these skills are necessary for implementing, maintaining or auditing an environmental management system. These kinds of activities also will be performed within a stipulated time frame and compensation, the main advantage of hiring an independent ISO consultant is for productivity.

Criteria for choosing right ISO 14001 consultant

It is crucial to assist organization for choosing the correct attributes of an ISO 14001 consultant in the proper implementation of the project. So following are the criteria that you need to consider:

1) Qualifications

To ensure the qualifications of the person of that hiring a consulting company or a consultant, will conduct the job in your organization. Check if he/she also possesses certifications like ISO 14001 Lead Auditor Course or ISO 14001 Lead Implementer Course.

2) Experience

The ISO 14001 consultant must have enough hands-on experience, both implementing and maintaining environmental management systems, conducting that particular ISO 14001 auditor training and performing internal audits in different kinds of organizations.

3) Reputation

Reputation is built with the years of experiences in the consulting field, not only helping organizations to achieve their ISO 14001 certification but delivering auditor trainings through courses or webinars. For checking all of these it will give you an idea whether the ISO 14001 consultant has a good reputation or not.

4) Cost-benefit balance

If the ISO 14001 consultant is very cheap, he/she may not bring many advantages to your organization by, for instance, developing complex environmental management systems that can be time-consuming for the employees. It is crucial to analyse whether contacting a premium consultant that is more expensive, is in fact more valuable for your organization. As well as there are many ways to find a very good ISO 14001 consultant, for instance through websites where good independent consultants offer their services for a reasonable cost.

5) Communication

Establishing a good communication with the ISO 14001 consultant is vital for the success of an environmental management system. And the most important thing is the ISO 14001 consultant must have the ability to listen the organization’s requirements. These kinds of modern technologies like cloud storage, content management systems or Skype will provide the project with an effective means of communication and avoid wasting time in lots of face-to-face meetings.

6) Confidentiality

When an ISO 14001 consultant enters organization he/she will learn all details about your processes. Evaluating the consultant’s background on this matter will save you from many future troubles. Also, consider only those professionals who are open to signing non-disclosure agreements. This way, you will be sure to protect your organization’s confidentiality.

Source: ems14001consultant.wordpress.com