Created by the International Organization for Standardization, ISO 14001 is a standard designed to produce globally accepted systems for environmental management. It is a voluntary program similar to ISO 9000, a series of standards developed in the 1980s to assist in implementing a quality management system.
"The ISO 14001 certification speaks highly of our work force and their direct engagement in protecting the environment," said Denny Hjeresen, EMS program manager in the Environmental Stewardship Division. "It is a culmination of a significant amount of work and is a message to our neighboring communities and our customers that we will use world-class systems to reduce the impacts of our mission on the environment."
ISO 14001 is a system that includes an environmental policy, targets and objectives, programs for implementation, monitoring and measurement and corrective actions. An organization's environmental policy must reflect management's commitment to compliance with applicable laws, pollution prevention and continual improvement.
"The program is prevention based, it goes beyond compliance," Hjeresen said. "It's a major system change and people are now seeing some positive results."
Facilities must carry out a program to identify and achieve objectives and targets through operational controls, organizational structures and accountability. The institution must then measure and monitor progress, address nonconformance, and analyze and improve the management system.
In March, an independent third-party registrar, NSF International Strategic Registrations Inc., of Ann Arbor, Mich., recommended that the Laboratory's Environmental Management System be certified to the ISO 14000-2004 standard. The Laboratory EMS had met the Department of Energy's requirements, but Laboratory officials voluntarily sought a higher level of performance measurement through the independent verification process.
The audit team members noted that Los Alamos is one of the most complex institutions they've come across.
"The scale and magnitude of the [Laboratory] EMS is unprecedented in the experience of the NSF auditors," NSF's lead auditor Chris Reimer said.
The third-party verification was based on a systematic evaluation of the Laboratory's EMS by a large team of independent auditors who visited the Laboratory the first week of March. The team interviewed randomly selected individuals from 23 Laboratory divisions. The team also interviewed staff in all five groups in the Environmental Stewardship Division, and staff in the Emergency Operations as well as personnel from KSL Services and Protection Technology Los Alamos.
The implementation of the Laboratory's EMS process was recognized as best-in-class in the DOE complex earlier this year and awarded a DOE Pollution Prevention STAR award.
All 31 divisions at Los Alamos identified potential environmental risks, established prioritized objectives and targets for improvements and committed to specific improvement actions. Nearly 600 improvement actions are currently underway as a result.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and the Washington Division of URS for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.