ISO Standards are often a must have due to stakeholder requirements, whether that's from your customers, investors or regulators.

The need for multiple ISO certifications is also becoming more common, which can become a tricky task to juggle if you're managing these as separate systems. The solution? An Integrated Management System.

In this episode, Steph Churchman explains what an integrated management system is, how the Annex SL format facilitates integration and the benefits and challenges involved with an IMS.

You'll learn

·      What is an Integrated Management System?

·      Why consider an IMS?

·      What is the Annex SL format?

·      What are the benefits of an IMS?

·      What are the challenges of implementing an IMS?

 

 

Resources

·      Isologyhub

 

In this episode, we talk about:

[02:05 ] Episode Summary – Steph explains what an Integrated Management System is, how the Annex SL format makes this possible and dives into the benefits and challenges associated with an IMS.

[02:20 ] What is an Integrated Management System? Often abbreviated to 'IMS', it simply refers to a management system based off certification to or alignment with multiple ISO Standards.

For example, a company may be certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 but will only have 1 Management system rather than 3 sperate systems.

[03:30 ] What is the Annex SL format? The Annex SL format was applied to most ISO Standards back in 2015. This format helped to create a consistent 10 clause structure which makes it simple to integrate multiple ISO Standards.

Before this was introduced, not all Standard clauses aligned, making it difficult to audit against and combine with other Standards, even if they had similar requirements.

[04:00 ] The Annex SL 10 Clause Structure explained:–

·      The first 3 clauses are explanatory clauses. These give you more context for the purpose of the standards, as well as providing a helpful glossary of terms and definitions that you'll come across in the Standard. These clauses aren't audited against

·      Clause 4 - Context of the Organisation: This is where you'll be establishing your scope, your interested parties and looking at where your risks and opportunities are. It's setting the foundation for your Management system.

·      Clause 5 Leadership: This is where you'll need commitment from top management. They will need to be involved with tasks such as establishing key policies, assigning roles & responsibilities and communicating the Management System once you're ready to launch it.

·      Claus