The concept of life cycle assessment is critical to the field of environmental management. Now there’s a new Technical Specification that helps you with this process. It’s ISO/TS 14071 and it’s titled “Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Critical review processes and reviewer competencies: Additional requirements and guidelines to ISO 14044:2006.” You’ll use it to support your implementation of the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards.
In order to meet the requirements of ISO 14044, it is essential to perform what’s called a critical review process. It is the method for having either a panel or an expert look at the Life Cycle Assessment and confirm that it’s scientifically and technically valid, transparent, consistent, and that appropriate data has been used to generate the results.
Since the publication of the ISO 14044 in 2006, some common practices have evolved to meet this review requirement. The new ISO/TS 14071 covers these developments and provides additional guidelines for conducting the review. It also addresses the competencies required of those who perform the review itself.
The tasks included in this technical specification are:
- Setting the scope of the review itself.
- Selecting, contracting and replacing the reviewer(s).
- The critical review process.
- How to assess the validity of the statement and report.
- Preparation required for the critical review report and statement.
- How to revise an existing critical review.
- The specific tasks affiliated with the various members of the critical review team.
Two tools you’ll appreciate are the Annex A, template for a critical review report, and Annex B, which is an example of the self-declaration for reviewer independence and competency. Your bibliography references 3 standards for further review: ISO 14025, ISO 14045, and ISO/TS 14067.
The committee does suggest that there are other standards in the ISO 14000 Environmental Management series that might benefit from the work done to product the ISO/TS 14071. Of course, if you do extend the procedures to other types of independent review, you’ll need to adapt the document in some ways.
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