With ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 currently being revised by ISO technical committees, Mike James, the managing director of LRQA, and David Lawson, LRQA’s technical director, talked about the progress to date on both standards as well as what the revisions could mean for the market at large.

David, could you explain why these standards are being revised?
Under the constitution of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), management system standards (MSS) are nominally reviewed every five years. This ongoing cycle is designed to ensure the applicability and relevance of international standards to provide current specifications for products, services, and good practices, which in turn helps make industry more efficient and effective through their use. Developed through global consensus, standards help break down barriers to international trade. It just so happens that the revision cycle has fallen on some of the world’s most popular standards, with both ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 14001 (environmental) among those currently being revised.

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