1st Party Services

Sustainable Steps specializes in helping small businesses become compliant to a variety of standards, including ISO 9001 and 14001(Quality and Environmental Management Systems), as well as OHSAS 18001 (Occupational Health and Safety), R2 (Responsible Recycling), E-Stewards, and RIOS (Recycling Industry Operating Standard), and ANSI’s Ecolabel certification.  Sustainable Steps provides the tools necessary to attain and stay compliant. Our consulting programs offer certification preparation, training, documentation templates, and everything needed to become certified.

What Services Can Sustainable Steps Provide?

  • Standard Interpretation
  • Gap Audit
  • Project Planning and Organization
  • Business Process Identification and Documentation
  • System Development and Implementation
  • Management System Documentation
  • Pre-Assessment
  • Training
  • Develop and Maintain your Internal Audit Program (see 2nd party services)
  • Continual Improvement Process

 

2nd Party Services

David Burdick contracts to organizations to conduct 2nd party internal audits against a variety of standards, including

  • ISO 17020 and 17021 and 17065 conformance assessment,
  • ISO 9001 quality management systems,
  • ISO 14001 Environmental Management systems,
  • OHSAS 18001 Health and Safety management,
  • R2, e-stewards and RIOS electronic recycling standards

 

3rd Party Services

David also contracts to various certifiers worldwide to assess organization’s compliance to various ecological standards such as:

  • E-Stewards, R2, RIOS electronic recycling standard,
  • Green Seal (GS) 1, 11, 33, 37, 40; 41, product performance standards
  • National Organic Plan;
  • Forest Stewardship Council (FSC);
  • ISO 14001 (Environmental Management System);
  • OHSAS 18001 Organizational health and safety standard
  • ISO 14020, 14024, and 14025 (Ecolabel programs),
  • ISO 9001 and 14001, Quality and Environmental Management System standards
  • 17020, 17021 and 17065-(Conformity assessment of certifiers),
  • STEP (Sustainable Tourism Evaluation Program)

 

Certification That Works

Sustainable Steps specializes in helping small businesses become compliant to a variety of standards, including ISO 9001 and 14001(Quality and Environmental Management Systems), as well as OHSAS 18001 (Occupational Health and Safety), R2 (Responsible Recycling), E-Stewards, and RIOS (Recycling Industry Operating Standard), and ANSI’s Ecolabel certification.  Sustainable Steps provides the tools necessary to attain and stay compliant. Our consulting programs offer certification preparation, training, documentation templates, and everything needed to become certified.


What Services Can Sustainable Steps Provide?

Standard Interpretation
Quality, Environmental and recycling management system standard can be a hard document to understand. It is written in quasi-legal language and points out requirements in very general terms. This is deliberately so, as it is meant to be applicable to all types of business activity. Quite a few companies have issues interpreting it to their organizations. An experienced consultant can help you apply the standard to your specific business processes.

Gap Audit
Before applying any standard to your business, you need to know what’s missing between your existing business practices and controls relative to the standard. Engaging a consulting services, you can have a review done of your current management system practices, controls and documentation, to establish the extent to which you conform to the standard’s requirements. Sustainable Steps will give you a detailed audit report indicating the gaps in your company, along with recommendations. This will help in putting together your project implementation plan to achieve full conformity.

Project Planning and Organization
Depending on the size and complexity of your company, implementing a standard can take anywhere from six months to eighteen months to complete. Your project needs to well-planned in terms of how much time and various resources needed, specific activities to be carried out, who will be responsible for each activity, milestone reviews, authorizations, training, dealing with problems, etc. A good consultant can be a valuable aid in assisting a business deal with this important activity.

Business Process Identification and Documentation
Management standards looks at business processes as the key point of control. These include internal as well as outsourced processes. Some companies have concerns distinguishing between processes, departments and functional activities. Sustainable Step’s expertise can help you identify and properly document all organizational processes pertaining to your management system. These include customer-oriented, management, product realization, resource planning, measurement, support and outsourced processes.

System Development and Implementation
The main emphasis of most standards is on effective planning, operation and control of thrust all relevant management system processes. This is likely the most time-consuming and difficult part of any implementation project. Many issues may arise as to what processes should be controlled, what makes for an effective control, how best to communicate and implement it, interaction between processes, how to set process goals and objectives and what records to keep. Here is where Sustainable Steps consulting will significantly help in answering these questions, provide required focus and facilitate implementation.

Management System Documentation
Many standards reduce the attention on documentation and maximizes its attention on effective planning and control. Sufficient documentation is however needed for many business processes in order to ensure consistent application of effective controls. Many organizations have either too much or too little documentation.  The experienced consultant at Sustainable Steps can help your organization determine where it is needed, how much and how it should be documented.

Pre-Assessment
Registrars (also referred to as Certification Bodies) perform their certification audit in two stages. In stage 1, they review how ready your business is (which includes your planning, documentation and internal review activities) and in stage 2 they audit your management system for effective implementation of planned controls. After spending several months of implementation, you consider your company ready for the certification audit, it might be useful to use external consulting from Sustainable Steps to do a once-over to determine if you are truly ready, identify any shortcomings and help you take appropriate corrective action, prior to the Registrar audit.

Training
Sustainable Steps consultancy services often offer a number of training alternatives. These include
– Standards awareness training to employees at all levels
– An executive overview of the standard to top management
– Process identification, mapping, analysis and improvement
– Project management
– Documentation and implementation
– Internal audit
– Use of problem-solving tools
Based on the extent of internal expertise within your organization, you may wish to have a Sustainable Steps provide some or all of this training.

Develop and Maintain your Internal Audit Program
To be certified and remain so, most standards requires your organization to plan and conduct an internal audit program of its quality management system. In these days, many organizations are short on resources, internal audit expertise and employee availability.  Sustainable Steps can be outsourced in order to upkeep of their internal audit programs.

Continual Improvement Process
Standard expects your management system to be dynamic and work towards continually improving the effectiveness and efficiency of your organization and enhance customer satisfaction. Sustainable Steps consulting services have diversified skills and experience in continual improvement strategies and methods. These could include problem-solving, six sigma, lean manufacturing, use of various business software and tools, etc. They can greatly increase your pace at gaining further operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and increased business profitability.

If you found this article informative and your organization is at the stage where it is seriously considering implementing a certified management system, then I invite you:

  1. To read other equally informative articles on this website
  2. Contact Sustainable Steps for specific help in any of the areas discussed in this article.