PECB Certified EMS ISO 14001 Lead Auditor ISO-14001-Lead-Auditor Exam Questions

A huge public library established an EMS following the requirements of ISO 14001, which was third-party certified 10 years ago. You are performing the second surveillance audit of the third certification cycle. The audit plan included an audit to the Director as the last interview before the closing meeting.

During the interview with the Director, you audit clause 6.2 (Objectives and planning to achieve them). The dialogue is as follows:

You: Could you please tell me which were the environmental objectives defined for last year and show evidence of their achievement?

Director: Yes. We had defined three objectives. As you can see from our Annual Plan, one of them was to separate our waste in four categories: paper, plastics, metals, food --- before, we had only three (plastic and paper were disposed together). We developed an Action Plan to achieve this objective.

Which six of the questions would you ask related to the Action Plan?

Whistlekleen is a national dry cleaning and laundry organisation with 50 shops. You are conducting an EMS surveillance audit of Head Office and are sampling environmental performance measurement. You find that 80 per cent of failures to meet performance criteria originate from five shops in the same region. Most of these failures relate to the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that exceeds regulations. The Environmental Manager tells you that these are the oldest shops in the organisation. The cleaning equipment needs replacing but the organisation cannot afford it at the moment.

On raising the matter with senior management, you are told that there are plans to replace the equipment in these shops over the next five years.

Select two options that apply to how you should respond to the information given.

ABC is a large lubricant oils manufacturer located in country

Showitoff is an organisation specialising in the design and production of wall decorating materials for the domestic market. During an ISO 14001 certification audit of the site, the auditor comes across an open, walled area just outside the maintenance department. It contains various scraps of wood and metal as well as several rusty components. They are lying on an oily floor. When asked about it, the EMS Manager states that he presumes that the materials come from maintenance work.

The auditor interviews the Maintenance Manager in his department. He notes that shelves containing various spares are well labelled and neatly stacked. He asked about the "dump" outside and is told that it contains some excess materials that the Manager likes to keep in case they come in handy at some stage. The auditor points out that the "dump" might be classed under regulations as a landfill site, which requires an operating licence. The Maintenance Manager is not aware of such a licence.

The auditor decides to review the process for evaluation of compliance with environmental regulations in more depth.

Select three options that provide a meaningful audit trail for this process.

What are the primary purposes of implementing an EMS based on ISO 14001:2015? Select two.

A group of 22 Italian restaurants in downtown San Francisco (US) established an EMS following the requirements of ISO 14001. You are performing an internal audit before the fourth certification cycle. The audit plan included an audit of the General Manager (GM) as the last interview before the closing meeting. During the interview with the GM, you audit clause 10.3 (Continual improvement). The dialogue is as follows.

You: Could you please tell me how did you improve the EMS to enhance environmental performance (Clause 10.3)?

GM: One way to improve the EMS is to improve one or several of its processes. We decided to improve the water-consuming processes in all our branches. We use water in many of our processes (e.g. to wash our kitchens, our cutlery, plates, and glasses, to keep our floors clean). The idea was to review these processes in detail to reduce the amount of water used per customer. Each of the 22 branches sent us their results, we analysed the data and found out that the average water consumption per customer was reduced by 13%; therefore, we improved our environmental performance. We are happy about that.

You: What about the results in each branch?

GM: Have a look at this table:

Analysing this table, what would be your decision related to raising nonconformities to clause 10.3? Select two.

Which two of the following options are an advantage of using a sampling plan for the audit?