How can you design an effective EMS for a public sector organization?

Most important aspect to be considered when assessing the current situation is the management perspective and support. Is top management ready and fully in support of establishing an EMS? Without management commitment a management system will be difficult to implement.

To design an effective EMS, there is a need to understand the context of the organization, the peculiarities of the organization, the services rendered by the organization, and how the activities affect the immediate and global environment. This will help for proper planning and to put in place adequate measures.

Don't forget to think about what you actually do for your communities and customers. This is often where organisations of all stripes overlook significant environmental and wider sustainability positives

An environmental management system, SGA, should have its main ally in the company's management, enforcing the tripod "commitment, development and sustainability", as it is about introducing a culture of environmental preservation into the productive means of an enterprise whose main focus It is production at any cost.

There is a preliminary requirement. You have to map out what the organisation does and how those operations impact the environment. This will guide you on the critical impacts.

For each objective build a plan. The plan is supported by processes and procedures. These produce metrics that indicate progress. One or more metrics will be key performance indicators (KPI), that you monitor closely to measure progress towards the objective. The KPIs need to be regularly monitored and reported.

With public sector organisations - Stakeholders engagement is always on a lower side. A realistic objective setting should be aimed and achieved. Existing condition of the Capex and additional cost to upgrade needed Opex should be correctly captured.

It's incredibly important to leverage all of the adaptive and hierarchical networks at your disposal in defining your objectives and targets. Also, ideally, you'll want to form, at minimum, leadership- and contributor-level working groups/committees to work to define objectives and targets that leverage the best available science and are not only science-based, but also have a high fidelity to leadership strategy and contributor abilities to perform within the space. For larger institutions, I also recommend middle-management and organization-wide/cross-cutting/cross-level working groups/committees to help vet and verify the objectives and targets to make sure they translate across all parts and layers of the organization.

In public sectors the stakeholders could be a wide range of people and organizations. For example a municipality is interacting with society and other stakeholders and regulatory agencies. Targets could be as large as municipal projects to protect the environment. Every issues relevant to the organization including office building wastes and energy consumption or any issues with their sub systems such as parks must be identified and mitigated. the mitigation measures must be defined and considered same as a project . Project responsibilities and authorities, scope, cost and timeline must be defined. KPI or key performance indicators to be defined in order to monitor the performance of the mitigation methods as well.

Os objetivos e metas devem ser atingiveis e mensuráveis, estando de acordo com os valores expressos na Política Ambiental. Deverão ser definidos em conjunto com as diversas áreas da organização.

Additionally, depending on the nature of the project and stakeholders, involve and keep updating the local community after reviewing and improving your ESM.

Action plan is a key tool for EMS. This should come after determining Environmental Aspects and associated impacts and risks of the public sector. Take an example of transportation public sector which could have waste generation as its environmental aspect and environmental pollution as its negative impact. The EMS of this example could include action points like: waste management awareness raising to public transport users; installing waste segregation bins to stations; penalties or fines for noncompliance; monitoring of the waste management program; among others. One thing to remember is to define waste metrics at the beginning which will determine progress and success of the EMS when it comes to waste performance reporting to the public.

A conscientização ambiental dos colaboradores é outro fator importante para o sucesso do SGA. É extremamente necessário que o plano de ação contemple ações de engajamento para envolvimento de todos da empresa.

Research the actions of other similar organisations to gain an understanding/benchmarking of sector actions. This enables you to create a baseline to build your actions upon and demonstrate clear goals to the public.

List out Aspect-Impact of the establishment and priorities the aspects Identify Applicable Environmental Regulations Develop Master Manual defining policy, roles & responsibilities, objectives, action plan, review plan, non-occurrence plan and implement those Hv an Internal Audit Hv a certification audit Plan-Do-Check - Act

This are where a good communication especially in public sector that has multiple different departments play major role. create an effective line of communication, conduct training need analysis and training module along with roles and responsibilities.

In one of projects where I was working, an environmental management plan arisen from environmental impact assessment of the project was used. Project was light rail transit expansion in city so the major issues was dewatering, excavation and soil disturbance, erosion and sediment, noise and dust pollution, process wastewater, contaminated soil, drilling mud contamination and etc. The plan was provided based on these issues and mitigation methods. For example mitigation method for process water contamination was to install a local water treatment system using a third party contractor and operation of the system. the system operation must be checked regularly using the inspection check list( effluent sampling, sampling test and results)

Monitorar e avaliar o desempenho é necessário ainda para garantir que a empresa/organização esteja sempre em conformidade com os requisitos legais e regulatórios estabelecidos pelos órgãos ambientais.

Performance evaluation is the key indicator on the effectiveness of the EMS. For public sector which has a lot of different departments, other than compliance, performance evaluation helps to identify gaps, improvements, legislations update and further ensuring EMS stays up to date and relevant across organizations.

Monitoring & Evaluation is vital . It gives an insight about the overall success or failure. It compares the set goals and the results side by side to measure how much the result has done with respect to the intended goal.

Los distintos KPI que se pueden seleccionar para medir un desempeño y objetivo deben ser elegidos con sumo cuidado. Podemos caer en el error de, en base a malos indicadores, pensar que hacemos algo bien o mal cuando no es así. También deben ser objetivos realistas y alcanzables puesto que, en caso contrario, cundirá la frustración y el desazón.

When monitoring and evaluating your EMS, it is crucial to develop and utilize a logic model that can visually describe all of what the EMS is supposed to do, and to ensure that the data and information that forms the foundation for the evidence to be used in monitoring and evaluating the EMS is well-identified and explained within that logic model. This way, those monitoring and evaluating the EMS can better understand it practically and logistically, and those implementing the EMS know how they will be monitored and evaluated, and how to best support those efforts. Also, much like the federal government is doing under the Evidence Act, consider developing a Learning Agenda and Annual Evaluation Plan to guide this work in the long-term.

All too often, EMS improvement efforts can focus on the "flavor of the day" or short-termism, as opposed to the initial assessment, leadership charter, longer-term goals, objectives, and targets, or even day-to-day implementation. This then leads to impractical or ineffective EMS. To those ends, it is critical to ensure that EMS improvements be based on the monitoring and evaluation that the institution performed on the EMS---with the objectives and targets in mind, and that the improvements have a high fidelity with EMS implementation as it is understood by contributors, managers, and leaders. To the extent that there is an alignment with institutional continuous improvement and Lean initiatives, all the better!

In my experience monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of an EMS is important as it aids in identifying the gaps in the system to ensure you improve on your environmental performance as an organization. Additionally, since several stakeholders are involved in a successful EMS their feedback in regards to status of the environmental impacts and mitigation measures applied is of importance. Not forgetting that environmental impacts evolve and change over time.

Keep your ems concise and focused on identifying and managing your organisations environmental risks. The EMS is not an entity unto itself. A bloated difficult to use EMS has the opposite effect in managing the real environmental risks your organisation faces.

If your company has different functions, e.g, manufacturing and packaging, ensure your EMS includes risk assessment(s) for each function within the entire company and that the loop is closed on all identified risks.

Really useful generic EMS construct that applies to any organisation seeking to implement an EMS - it isn't focused on the specific functions of public sector organisations. It would be helpful to see some discussion on whether a public sector organisation's EMS should focus solely on the 'functions' of running the organisation or whether the public services it provides should be taken into account. Also, given the cash-trapped status of most public sector bodies, some discussion on how to prioritise aspects/impacts and objects would be useful - with perhaps some reference to options on phased implementation as set out in ISO 14005.

Ensure that you research the most up-to-date EMS standards, it may require you to undertake some training and update the plans and any documents, policy and publications but best to be as professional as possible in this respect as your EMS will have many eyes on it.