clapgeek logo
You are auditing the ISO 14001 management system of a primary school (School 21st Century) located in downtown Lima, Peru. There are 400 students, attending classes from 9 am until 5.30 pm.
You have presented a nonconformity at the closing meeting:
Non-conformity - No environmental aspect has been identified related to the impact of the education provided by the school on students' awareness (as future adults) related to generic environmental issues.
Select the three best acceptable corrections that the school may take.
Which one of the following options best describes the main purpose of a Stage 2 third-party audit?
Which one of the following outcomes of an audit does not require the auditee to respond?
You are leading a recertification audit of XM, a manufacturer of cosmetics products. After the initial certification, XM moved to another site.
After the opening meeting, you are visiting the new site with the production manager (PM). The dialogue is as follows:
You: It seems that you are doing some work in the right-hand corner of the site.
PM: Yes, when we moved to this site, there was a very old, three-stories high building; it was almost empty, and we decided to demolish it and to build a new office for the administrative personnel. DEMO services are doing the job, which is almost over.
You: Do you know what the old building was used for?
PM: I was told that it was a warehouse for chemical storage, including a laboratory and toilets for the personnel. It had also a chimney, I do not know what for.
You: Did you consider it necessary to refer to some parts of the EMS for this work?
PM: No, we were busy moving all equipment and materials to the new site, we did not have time to care about something that was going to disappear.
Which four audit trail issues would you follow?
Sparkle is an organisation that provides mobile car cleaning services at customers' premises. It has been certified to ISO 14001 for some time and has appointed a full-time Environmental Management System Manager. The audit plan during a surveillance audit includes continual improvement and the auditor asks to see the most recent management review meeting minutes.
The minutes indicate that the Environmental Management System Manager reported that the last review of the organisation's environmental legislation register was made three years ago instead of annually as planned in the Environmental Management System. At that time, he asked for finances to employ a legislation expert to update the register but was denied the request by top management on the basis that it was unlikely that many changes to legislation had occurred. No related improvement actions were documented in the minutes.
Based on the scenario, select the two options which best describe the evidence for raising such a non-conformity.
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 exceeded 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.
When reviewing the nonconformity report files, you find that the organisation is facing a legal dispute with the environmental authority over multiple breaches of environmental legislation.
Select the three best options for how this dispute should be handled by the organisation through its EMS.
A multi-level shopping centre is open every day to the public from 09:00–21:00 hours. During an external audit of the centre to ISO 14001, you establish that there are 40 vending machines that are permanently switched on. Thirty of them do not sell perishable foodstuffs. You also note that there are eight escalators in the complex that run constantly during public access. When asked about environmental performance improvement objectives, the Centre Manager says that there are plans to increase the natural daylight by installing more skylights thus saving on lighting costs, but the estimated budget for this has not yet been approved by the board.
You: I note that energy consumption is a significant environmental aspect in the centre. How do you mitigate the impacts of this?
EMS Manager: We try to reduce our energy costs by negotiating a better deal from the energy company. We are considering changing to one that only supplies electricity from renewable sources.
You: What steps have you taken to reduce overall consumption?
EMS Manager: We conducted awareness training for staff. For example, turning off lights in staff areas not being used.
You: I see that the escalators account for the highest usage of energy. Are there any objectives to try and reduce this?
EMS Manager: No, it would be too costly to change them.
You: How do you measure electricity consumption?
EMS Manager: We have meters installed in each floor of the centre. We take readings every hour and we plot the consumption graph for every staff shift.
You continue the interview and find that energy consumption has increased steadily over the past five years. Select the two statements that are true.
You are conducting a Stage 2 certification audit of VitalSpark, a pharmaceutical organisation manufacturing vitamins and other healthcare medicines. In a separate area in the centre of their large site, a supplier produces oxygen supplies piped directly into the manufacturing processes of VitalSpark. They also deliver oxygen in bulk tankers to other customers. When you review the environmental aspects register, you find that the only environmental aspect recorded for this arrangement relates to the heavy goods vehicles of the supplier transiting the site.
You ask the EMS Manager about the environmental consequences to VitalSpark of this arrangement and are told that they are not significant since the supplier has its own services for water, sewage, waste and energy. The EMS Manager tried unsuccessfully to communicate with the supplier who is located inside the VitalSpark site and outside the scope of the EMS.
You raise a non-conformance against clause 6.1.2 of ISO 14001:
"VitalSpark does not maintain documented information on aspects/impacts related to activities, products and services of the oxygen supplier."
Which combination of two of the following actions proposed by VitalSpark would permit you to close out the nonconformity?
Which one of the following conclusions in the audit report is not required by the certification body when deciding to grant certification?
TESTED 16 Jun 2025