‫بسم هللا الرحمن الرحيم‬

Elective Course
Environmental Impact Assessment
and Environmental Auditing
9. Environmental
Auditing (EA)
Content :

1. Introduction
2. Environmental Audit.
3. Types of Environmental Audit
4. Phases of Environmental Audit
5. Environmental Audit and International Standards.
6. Audits Tools and Technologies.
7. Documents Needed for an Audit.
8. Safety Culture for Conducting Environmental Audit.

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1. Introduction:
Environmental auditing is a systematic, documented, periodic and
objective process in assessing an organization's activities and
services.

➢ Conducting an environmental audit is no longer an option but a

sound precaution and a proactive measure in today's heavily
regulated environment.

➢ EA helps to trigger new awareness and new priorities in policies

and practices.

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1. Introduction (cont.):
EA means organization's activities and services in relation to:
➢ Assessing compliance with relevant legal and internal
requirements
➢ Facilitating management control of environmental practices
➢ Promoting good environmental management
➢ Maintaining credibility with the public
➢ Raising staff awareness and enforcing commitment to
departmental environmental policy
➢ Exploring improvement opportunities
➢ Establishing the performance baseline for developing an
Environmental Management System (EMS)
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2. Environmental Audit https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NaTMEciD0vdeKJMY60pdZgRyQMZC3Kx6AIfzUcxRpW_P7_z_IUs_tTW1yYPkWidhJl4XnDH-yjigYJwfw1xaDhaYHhZTOpneqclhp5d-QE0LtzMA17BofBQ5oRjdA=s0-d-e1-ft#https://i.pinimg.com/474x/eb/5f/bf/eb5fbf03512ea53a2a79f6bc3023a293.jpg

➢ The main goal of environmental audits is to

ensure compliance with environmental laws,
they are very important, especially for healthy
and safe environment for the organization

➢ The organizations are under high pressure for

minimizing the harmful effects of their activities
on the environment.

➢ Environmental audit provide any organization

with third-party verification and reviewing of the
environmental initiatives and improvements.
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2. Environmental Audit (cont.)
➢ The experienced environmental auditors of the certification body, will
guide to work on maintaining lower energy and raw materials use.

➢ They will guide also to minimizing waste and pollution and

preventing risks of accidents and emergency situations.

➢ The business operations will not only be environmentally

sustainable, but it will also result to be more efficient and productive.

➢ EAs can show managerial teams what they can do to improve

environmental sustainability, and to elaborate which environmental
processes positively affect productivity and efficiency.
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2. Environmental Audit (cont.)
➢ Failure to comply with these rules and regulations can result in
severe consequences such as fines and more.

➢ Through environmental audits, companies can understand where

training is needed and whether they have the right control systems
in place.

➢ For ISO 14001 certification, companies must go through checks

conducted by an independent third party, before that companies can
perform internal audits

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3. Types of Environmental Audit
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There are three types of Environmental Audits:

1. Environmental Compliance Audits

2. Environmental Management Audits

3. Functional Environmental Audits

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3. Types of Environmental Audit
1. Environmental Compliance Audits–

➢ It reviews an organization’s environmental performance and environmental

responsibility and ensures that an organization adheres to all the laws,
regulations, guidelines, policies, and procedures.

➢ Compliance obligations can be considered as applicable laws and regulations.

➢ Environmental compliance audits are intended to review the site's/company's

legal compliance status in an operational context.

➢ Compliance audits generally begin with determining the applicable legal

compliance requirements against which the operations will be assessed.
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3. Types of Environmental Audit (cont.)
2. Environmental Management Audits:-

➢ Evaluate EMS and ensure the efficiency of the system, it helps the organization
to understand its performance on its own environmental performance standards.

➢ It reviews and evaluates the organization's environmental legal requirements

and assesses compliance with those requirements.

3. Functional Environmental Audits–

➢ Functional Environmental Audits are conducted to evaluate compliance with the

specific aspects and ensure implementation of corrective actions.

➢ It evaluates the effect of a particular activity or process.

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4. Phases of Environmental Audit

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4. Phases of Environmental Audit (cont.)
1. Pre-Audit Phase – It includes:

Creation of an Auditing team

Construction of an Audit plan
Documentation review- It includes
- Permit application
- Records related to production
- Reports of previous audits(if any) along with proof of
the corrective actions taken

Preparing a list of possible questions and follow-ups related to

prior audits conducted
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4. Phases of Environmental Audit (cont.)
2. Audit Phase– It includes :
❑ Site inspection

❑ Evaluating operations to ensure compliance

❑ Collecting samples if required

❑ Cross-examining environment, health , and safety (EHS) personnel,

operation, management, maintenance, and policies

❑ Identifying issues of concern

Conduction of a closing meeting to discuss all the identified issues and

implementing corrective actions
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4. Phases of Environmental Audit (cont.)

3. Post-Audit Phase – It includes

Preparation of environmental audit reports

Listing identified issues and concerned areas

Listing action taken and required follow-ups

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5. Environmental Audits and International Standards

ISO 14001 is an international standard for environmental

management systems ("EMS").

It provides the requirements for an EMS and ISO 14004 gives

general EMS guidelines

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5. Environmental Audits and International Standards
(cont.)

An EMS meeting the requirements of ISO 14001 is a management tool

enabling an organization of any size or type to perform the following:

- Identify and control the environmental impact of its activities,

products or services;

- Improve its environmental performance continually, and

- Implement a systematic approach to setting environmental

objectives and targets, to achieving these and to demonstrating
that they have been achieved.
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5. Environmental Audits and International Standards
(cont.)
➢ Organizations implementing ISO 14001 usually seek to
obtain certification by independent Certification Bodies.
➢ Certification indicates that the documentation, implementation and
effectiveness of the EMS conform to the specific requirements of ISO
14001.
➢ The ISO 14000 family of international standards has been updated to
include ISO 14044 Life cycle assessment and top management
amongst other changes.

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6. Audit tools and technology
➢ The term "protocol" means the checklist used by environmental
auditors as the guide for conducting the audit activities.

➢ Audit firms frequently develop general protocols that can be applied

to a broad range of companies/operations.

➢ Current technology supports many versions of computer-based

protocols that attempt to simplify the audit process by converting
regulatory requirements into questions with "yes", "no" and "not
applicable" check boxes.
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6. Audit tools and technology (cont.)
➢ Other auditors (typically those with many years of
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environmental auditing experience) use the

regulations/permits directly as protocols.

➢ These protocols are more flexible as they rely on the

expertise and knowledge of experienced auditors and
source documents (regulations, permits, etc.) directly.

➢ During the past 20 years, advances in Information and

communications technology (ICT) have had major
impacts on auditing
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7. Documents Needed for an Audit
Companies generally need maps and floor plans of their facility to figure out where
to perform the audit and how to do it.

Additionally, companies may need to submit the following documents:

Environmental compliance certificates
Environmental permits
All raw materials used in company procedures
Environmental plans
Employee training records

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7. Documents Needed for an Audit (cont.)
➢ Coming up with all these documents is challenging enough.

➢ Considering that gathering the documents is only the start of the audit,
modern companies need to incorporate different tools to make it much
easier to conduct these audits.

➢ One of these tools is safety culture which is an all-in-one auditing tool is

made for modern companies and comes with features that can simplify
gathering documents and conducting audits for the team.

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8. Safety Culture for Conducting Environmental https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NYGoe3qYUu5M4wnCrk3hZ_qW6mnwTdBiFtpycQ-fnNfbJc7LUA_fhBJ-ktIBhD9oGr5X19BRf5VLuSponnkXzlMqnMycuR2EdM0hYv_vMYijaEuTepn8AJRS_FDYw=s0-d-e1-ft#https://i.pinimg.com/474x/f9/06/ca/f906ca78af5b25b13b76a3aa5c514a02.jpg

Audits

➢Safety Culture is a modern application that

companies and teams can use to conduct
comprehensive, quick, and insightful
environmental audits.

➢It’s designed to easily integrate into modern

processes and comes with a wide range of
features designed to optimize document
collecting and auditing.
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8. Safety Culture for Conducting Environmental
Audits (cont.)

➢ With Safety Culture, environmental audits can be done much easier

through the following features:

➢ i. Creating or editing premade environmental audit checklists that

teams can use as a reference point when conducting inspections

➢ ii. Generating and storing reports in Web, PDF, and Word formats
that make it easier for teams to gather documents for future
audits

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8. Safety Culture for Conducting Environmental
Audits (cont.)
iii. A reporting system where employees can report issues as they
happen, attaching photo and video for better context, allowing
teams to check areas where companies weren’t compliant with the
environmental regulations

iv. Facilitating workplace communications to ensure the auditing

team is always on the same page and meeting their goals

v. Building workflows with automated schedules to help the auditing

team streamline processes toward a common goal
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 .

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Any Questions??
 Thank You

Prof. Dr. Mahmoud A. El Kady