1.
Scope
1.1 General
This Guide provides assistance to hospital facility managers for the development and implementation of an environmental system (EMS) based on ISO 14001.
The scope of this Guide is limited to buildings or facilities used for commercial or institutional purposes.
An organization may choose to extend the scope of its EMS beyond what is covered in this Guide.
For the hospital sector, the most practical unit of consideration for an EMS is a hospital building, along with any associated buildings, such as a parking ga rage, that serve the main building.
Where several hospital buildings are organized in a campus, the campus would be the unit of consideration.
A hospital with more than one site could have an EMS for the entire organization that applies to all sites, with site-specific detailed management practices and procedures for each location that address and describe the requirements of the organization-level EMS.
Although this Guide attempts to be as comprehensive as possible, ISO Standards 14001 and 14004 should also be consulted.
1.2 Structure of Guide: Investigate, Define, Plan, Do, Check, Act
Each clause in the Guide covers one of the above headings.
For ease of use, the “”plan”” component of the implementation has been divided into three sections:
“”investigate””, “”define””, and “”plan””.
By the end of this Guide, you will have covered all of the elements required by ISO 14001.
Appendices and explanatory materials (set in text boxes) are intended to supply detailed information and add to the Guides usability. The worksheets included in Appendix B are intended to be used by hospital facility managers while developing their EMS.
The worksheets should act as outlines for completing the various activities described in the Guide; they are not intended to provide comprehensive methodologies.
For buildings in general, the most significant environmental impact is emissions resulting from energy use.
For a complete listing of all the ISO 14001 elements, refer to Appendix C.
See too the ISO 14001 text boxes throughout the document for the text of the elements.