From 3 certificate of 9001, 14001, and 18001 into a IMS

What cost savings? Do you have separate visits for all certificates?

If you think you can save costs on reduced audit time, you might want to check, before you start wondering too much about IMS. Internal cost savings MAY be possible - internal audits for example - but I rather doubt you'd be able to actually show any savings, unless you have really good cost controls in place.

On the certification side, there's some reductions given for an IMS, if you have the audits done at the same time you'd save something on travel, but the actual duration of the audits isn't likely to change very much, in my experience. Why not ask your CB representative first?

 

From my experience, there were little - if any - IMS cost savings from an external perspective. Internally, however, the tangible costs (financial, people, time) were abundant.

• Time on internal audits
• One document control system
• One NC/CAPA system
• One large management review (with separated smaller ones over the course of the year)
• Reduced training

With regard to the intangible costs:

• Common culture - it's not quality or environment tor safety, it's simply what we do
• Common direction
• Common language - CA is CA, identifying an applicable standard is rather non-value-add
• Happier workforce
• Auditors cite you as a benchmark (hopefully) and they're happier because they start to see commonalities within the system - if it's working for one standard, odds are it's working for another - and then they ask you to speak about your IMS (or an element of it) at an upcoming ASQ meeting...or maybe that's only happened to me. *lol*

 

But we did not have one certificate with all three standards on it. We wanted to go for something like that, but our Registrar did not offer it.

 

It CAN be, but it's going to depend on a number of factors: does your CB actually have an auditor who has competencies in all disciplines? In my experience, the competencies are frequently ISO 9001, and then ISO 14001/OSHAS 18001, rarely all 3 in one person. Doing the audits at the same time don't automatically mean saving audit days - there are rules governing this - take a look at the IAF's MD 5 document etc. www.iaf.nu and the "publications" and then "mandatory documents".

 

My 2 Cents, based on the previous comments: We run an integrated system, based on ISO 9001, 14001, 50001, and OHSAS 18001. Roxane described the benefits so well that there is little reason for me to elaborate further, but they are substantial.

The common structure (Annex SL) in the new issues of ISO 9001 & 14001 will make integration easier than before and ISO 45001, which is set to replace OHSAS 18001 in 2015 will improve things further.
As for both internal and external audits, they are integrated as well. We have one certificate for each std, though.

 

At the time, we were unable to combine the three systems into one audit - it simply was not offered by our Registrar. I'm no longer with that organization and I do not know what they have done since.

But yes, we integrated everything you listed...we created our Business Management System (BMS) to address applicable standards as well as the requirements set forth by our parent company.

 

A registrar is "allowed" to do audit of all three management systems at the same time. Why wouldn't they be? It might mean having 3 auditors with different competencies, of course. Would you want that? If you are thinking that one audit, done by one auditor, against all 3 requirements, then this is less likely because it's highly unlikely that there's many auditors who possess competencies in all 3 disciplines. The duration of the audit isn't going to be much less either.

What is your interest? Is it reduction of costs of travel etc?

 

And even fewer who have all three competencies...