The latest milestone in the ISO 14001 revision procedure was reached on July 2, 2015 with the matter of ISO/FDIS 14001. This document is the final draft before the publication of the standard (scheduled for September 2015). The convention at ISO is that only “editorial” changes to the text are permitted between the matter of the FDIS and final publication of the standard, therefore we can be reasonably assured that FDIS 14001 contains the needs of the revised version of ISO 14001.
The whole procedure can take several months to several years depending on the size of the organization. If an organization is already ISO 9000-certified, the implementation of ISO 14001 does not take as long. When an organization is compliant, they can either register with a third-party registrar or self-declare their compliance. The ISO 14001 standard is the only ISO 14000 standards that permits an organization to be registered or “certified.
