In order to carry out the audit, the Managing Director set up an audit team that included the company’s environmental and quality mangers as well as outside consultants, who were called in to help with on-site training. To help them carry out
the audit, the company thought of itself as enclosed within a plastic bubble, and everything that went in and out of the building, from employees and telephone cables, to mail and emissions, had to pass through the bubble for scrutiny. “It was a very simple way of focusing our minds on every aspect of our activities” says Mark Fairbrass “and it proved to be a searching audit”.
To assist in the auditing process, a series of checklists were prepared for recording details of the operational effectiveness of the environmental management system, for identification of instances of non-compliance and for recording suggestions for improvements. The results were used in the preparation of the audit report and the information in the report was fed back into the management system in order to promote continuous improvement in environmental performance.