FDIS 9001 and 14001 Released - Pre Assessments Available

17 July 2015

FDIS is here! Organizations will have up until mid-2018 to complete their transition, but getting and early start is recommended - an FDIS pre-assessment may be a good way to ‘dip a toe in the water’.

FDIS Status Reached

Both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 have recently reached significant milestones in their parallel-path revision timelines: the Final Draft International Standards (FDIS) were published in early July. (FDIS is the final step before formal publication of the ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 standards.)

ISO/FDIS 9001 was published July 9, 2015
ISO/FDIS 14001 was published July 2, 2015

Both FDIS documents are currently available through ASQ via their website www.asq.org or by calling (800) 248-1946.

Following normal ISO revision methodology, these FDIS documents should contain all the technical aspects of the ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 standards which will be published in September 2015. Only minor editorial changes should be seen after this point. As such, organizations wishing to get an early start on reviewing and understanding the new standards may find it beneficial to purchase copies of the FDIS versions.

For those who may be familiar with the DIS versions, some changes will be noted in these FDIS versions, but the ‘big ticket’ items in the revision are largely retained, including:

Adoption of Annex SL structure
Consideration of context of the organization, interested parties, and alignment with strategic direction of the organization
Addition of “Risk-Based Thinking” particularly with regard to actions to address risks and opportunities
Use of “Documented Information” to replace both documented procedures and records terminology
Use of “External Providers” to replace supplier terminology and include outsourced providers and other associated arrangements

NQA Pre-Assessment/Gap Assessment

As with any certification, NQA is able to offer Pre-Assessments (aka Gap Assessments) to organizations wanting an “off the record” assessment of their conformance to the requirements of FDIS 9001 or FDIS 14001.

An FDIS Pre-Assessment would include the auditor auditing to the FDIS version of the standard and documenting findings against the applicable new/changed requirements. While NQA cannot provide direct consultation activity on updating an organization’s management system to comply with any new/changed requirements, a pre-assessment gives a good idea of where gaps exist and their severity. The output of an NQA FDIS pre-assessment would be an audit report with non-conformances identifying any gaps in the organization’s conformance to the FIDS requirements. These nonconformances can then be focused upon prior the organization’s actual transition audit, thus provided a higher confidence level in a successful transition audit.

NQA allows organizations to customize the duration and scope of pre-assessments, so this activity could include any of the following common approaches:

Multiple day pre-assessment to audit the entirety of the FDIS standard
Single day pre-assessment to audit selected areas of the FDIS standard
Integrated audit to combine FDIS 9001 and 14001 changes

Organizations will have up until mid-2018 to complete their transition, but getting and early start is recommended - an FDIS pre-assessment may be a good way to ‘dip a toe in the water’.

To further discuss FDIS pre-assessments, feel free to contact your CSR by calling NQA at (800) 649-5289.