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Our Work Introduction

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Technology Innovation
Energy & Climate
Environmental Management & Security Systems
Water & Sanitation

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ISO 14001 Implementation Initiative with Local Governments

September 1997 - September 1999

Introduction
Seven municipalities, one county, and one state organization have completed the ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems (EMS) Initiative. Funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Wastewater Management and Office of Compliance through a cooperative agreement with the Global Environment & Technology Foundation, this two-year project represented a unique opportunity for small and medium-sized government organizations to implement an ISO 14001 EMS at a facility/organization of their choice. A variety of organizations, both single facilities and multiple operations, were chosen for this project. The following matrix summarizes the participants, their "fencelines," and the number of employees at that site.

Project Goals
It was expected that each of the participants would have all of the elements of an ISO 14001 EMS in place in their fenceline organizations at the close of the two-year project. Additional project goals included:

Evaluation of the effectiveness of the ISO 14001 EMS on the management of environmental and economic issues;

Tracking costs, staff commitment, benefits, hurdles, environmental performance, interested stakeholder involvement, and pollution prevention activities; and,

Communicating results and lessons learned across the public and private sector.

GETF's Role
EPA selected the Global Environment & Technology Foundation (GETF) to lead the Municipalities Initiative and to provide on-going training, implementation materials, technical assistance, and EMS coaching to each of the municipal organizations throughout the two-year project. Participants used GETF's Implementation Toolkit, a collection of print and electronic training materials specifically designed for the challenges faced by municipalities, to accomplish the milestones in each of the three phases of the project.

Reporting
Participants submited monthly tracking reports in which they recorded task completion, benefits, hurdles, expenses associated with implementation, staff commitment, use of resources, and other issues they encountered. They also completed baseline protocols in Environmental Management Systems, Environmental Performance, Environmental Compliance, Pollution Prevention Activities, and Interested Stakeholder Involvement. The purpose of these protocols was to develop a baseline in order to assess how the adoption of an ISO 14001 EMS affects the organization's performance over time.

Phase 1
Participants were required to complete three phases of tasks throughout this two-year project. The first phase of tasks were introduced at the kick-off meeting in August 1997 in Boston, MA. The following tasks were completed in Phase I:

Select management representative;

Define management representative's roles and responsibilities;

Ensure top management understanding, commitment, and visibility;

Define core team roles and responsibilities;

Allocate necessary resources;

Develop environmental policy;

Determine training needs and provide training;

Train core team;

Determine external criteria;

Kick-off employee awareness program; and,

Conduct gap analysis.

Phase II
Participants met again in January 1998 in Scottsdale, AZ to review Phase II tasks. These tasks included most of the elements of the planning section (4.3) of the ISO 14001 standard. The following lists Phase II tasks:

Describe workflow processes of each functional unit in the facility;

Identify environmental aspects and impacts of products, activities, and services in each functional unit, and determine significance;

List objectives and targets for each significant aspect;

Develop environmental management programs;

Assign responsibility for writing EMS procedures and work instructions;

Establish strong internal and external communication processes;

Document the EMS; and,

Train employees.

Phase III
Participants met to review tasks for Phase III in January 1999 in Fort Meyers, FL. This workshop served as a forum for the participants to share their implementation experiences and to plan for the tasks ahead in Phase III, this included monitoring and measuring (4.5) and management review (4.6) of the ISO 14001 standard. The following lists the Phase III tasks:

Develop audit programs;

Create audit protocols;

Audit functional units;

Develop corrective and preventive actions; and,

Integrate audit findings with management review.

Conclusion
The final meeting of this project was held at the Bar Association of New York in July 1999. The participants met to compile information on benefits, hurdles, lessons learned, and drivers for EMS implementation. This information and data gathered during the course of the project will be used to generate a report on the effectiveness of an EMS in the public sector. The report will be made available in December 1999. The culminating event of this two-year project was the presentation given by the project participants to EPA officials and other interested parties on drivers for implementation, benefits, hurdles, and lessons learned.

The overwhelming response from the participants was that the EMS works. Related Information At the completion of the project, the participants were at different stages of the implementation process. Some of the participants will pursue ISO 14001 certification while others have yet to complete implementation. NYCTA is the only participant to achieve certification (March 1999). See the EPA final report (due December 1999) for the status of each participant's EMS.

Project Expenses
Participants have tracked monthly expenses associated with developing and implementing their EMS in each phase of the project. The most frequent expenses reported have been labor hours, or time spent implementing the EMS. Participants have incurred other costs such as travel to the training sessions, in-kind contributions, consultants, and materials. Figure 1 illustrates the total average costs incurred for implementing the EMS over a 21 month period. Graphics available in pdf format

Staff Commitment
Time spent on the project includes both the project manager and "project support." Project support includes members of the core team, the facility manager, city government personnel, community activists, administrative support staff, legal departments, and environmental managers and consultants. Figure 2 illustrates the total average time committed to implement the EMS over a 21 month period. Graphics available in pdf format

Drivers for Implementation

The following describes some of the drivers for the participants in implementing an EMS, benefits realized, and hurdles encountered. The following statements were made at the final workshop.

"The EMS will support the City's overall philosophy of constant improvements in efficient and effective service to its customers."

"The project was viewed as an opportunity to improve internal and external communication; to organize, streamline, and consistently manage environmental issues and regulatory responsibilities."

"A major force to develop an EMS were members of the City's Volunteer Environmental Affairs Committee. In conjunction with the City's new environmental standards, the development of the EMS would depict the City as a leader in environmental protection."

"An EMS provides organizational consistency which helps prevent non-compliance. The program fosters a proactive approach throughout the organization to address our environmental issues instead of the old reactive approach to compliance issues. We now go by the motto 'Create our future instead of predict.'

"We see the EMS as helping us remain competitive with private industry. The municipality is on the cutting edge - for once it is the leader rather than the private sector."

"EPA wants us to do this - it's a good public to public relationship to have. Every time EPA shows up it's a compliance issue or a consent decree maybe there is an opportunity to develop a proactive program that a municipality could never start on its own."

Benefits

Participants have seen numerous benefits during the course of implementation. The following statements were taken from their monthly tracking reports:

"Examining our compliance issues revealed an opportunity for cost savings. Our city government consists of 15 departments with each responsible for obtaining their own air quality permits - a total of 23 with associated fees. Our environmental department consolidated the permits into eight, reducing paperwork and saving the City $16,000 a year in permit fees."

"Implementation of motion-sensored lights throughout the facility has resulted in cost savings of about $7,500 over a ten month period." "Historically we've been a facility that has had numerous compliance issues. Development of an EMS signaled to the state regulatory agency that we are taking a proactive approach to address our environmental issues. In response, we believe the state has given it much more latitude, is quicker to provide technical support and has been generally more supportive."

"Coordination of environmental issues, reduction of liability, local publicity, improved relationships with private business community."

"Interdepartmental data sharing, communication and cooperation to achieve a common goal."

"Heightened awareness of the environmental importance and impact of the activities surrounding the facility has been attained at the upper management, facility management and employee level."

"The education of the Board of Commissioners regarding the importance of ISO 14000 implementation is a major step towards educating the community."

"The plant has 50 industrial users that we will be reaching out to in an informal manner to help them evaluate their own environmental aspects and think about things that they may do to minimize detrimental environmental impacts."

"Developing an EMS helps significantly in reducing, if not eliminating our risk of violation with regard to compliance issues before they even arise."

"The facility has seen many benefits so far:

Identifying responsibility for compliance issues

Identifying areas of concern with regard to environmental issues

Better communication between divisions

Documenting procedures and work instructions provides consistent and reliable methods of dealing with environmental aspects

Identifying goals to lessen the environmental impact of the town's activities."

"The greatest benefit has been defining roles and responsibilities with regard to legal requirements."

"Managers learn more about their organization that allows them to become better managers. Their knowledge about operations has been broadened, including an increased understanding of technical and personnel issues."

"The EMS has improved communications and the relationship between operations management and the union line workers."

"We are developing sound work procedures for areas that have historically caused us concern because of sloppy work behavior or performance helping us to reduce liability and risk."

"Positive external publicity for the organization."

"Improved environmental communication between employees in various areas of the organization, who might not otherwise interact."

"Increased employee awareness regarding environmental and safety issues."

"Empowering all employees to raise environmental concerns."

Hurdles

While participants are experiencing many benefits, they have also encountered hurdles throughout the two year implementation process. Hurdles include:

"The scope of the fenceline. It was difficult to separate one operation from another at the site, so my scope was expanded to three divisions with three administrators."

"Difficulty in scheduling meetings and training sessions where everyone is available. Everyone has a very busy schedule."

"Initial establishment of organizational structure for our Oversight, Core Team and Steering Committee."

"Pulling the manpower together from our small staff for our initial inventory and getting the task done. We felt it was important to identify chemicals we were using and hazardous waste that was being generated for legal and compliance review and the gap analysis."

"The project managers have been working hard at defining the key components of the EMS and identifying the tasks necessary to complete them. Associating these tasks with defined work objectives that can be assigned to core team members and providing training has not been easy."

"Early attempts at quantifying existing EMS procedures, policies and guidelines and defining an environmental policy may have been too focused at the divisional level and the facility operations. There needs to be an assessment of external factors (institutional, community, regulatory, programs policies, procedures and guidelines) which are outside the stated fenceline, but definitely are contributing to and impacting the process of developing an EMS at this facility."

"It has been difficult to complete the legal and regulatory requirements matrix and environmental aspects for operations so widely varying as the entire city."

"Competing priorities sometimes result in the redirection of personnel from EMS projects to other projects."

"TIME! TIME! TIME! The EMS team is committed to the project as a benefit to our organization. However, all members are working on multiple projects, and since the beginning of this project nothing was removed from their list."

"The inability to initially quantify the benefits of an EMS project significantly reduced enthusiasm for the project. As we are able to identify the benefits of the EMS more clearly, we anticipate the EMS program will become a higher priority, and the redirection of employees will be substantially reduced."

"If your top management support (city manager or select board) leaves, you are back to ground zero and need to go back and educate to regain support. Political uncertainty can impact the life of the EMS."

"A systems approach requires a fundamental change in how the organization addresses its environmental issues. A 30 year employee has acquired compliance knowledge over the span of his/her employment period. When that individual leaves so does the knowledge; getting it down on paper is threatening to current employees. How does an international standard apply to a municipal government? We need a better grasp/understanding of what an EMS entails before implementing it."

For additional information contact Craig Ruberti, cruberti@getf.org.

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