IA202602 — Planning¶
Audit Record
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Audit reference | IA202602 |
| Area audited | Planning — risks and opportunities, aspects, hazards, objectives and planning of change |
| Audit criteria | ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018 clause 6 · POL_HSQE_00 · POL_HSQE_21 |
| Audit date | 29/04/2026 |
| Auditor | Sean Ashton, HSQE Consultant, Onyx Operations Ltd |
| Auditees | Aaron Mason (Director), Leanne Mason (Director) |
| Result | Conforms. 0 non-conformities, 1 observation |
| Previous audit of this area | IA202502, 2025 cycle |
| Form | FORM_INTAR001 Rev 1 ID 01/09/2025 |
1. Scope, criteria and independence¶
1.1 Scope¶
What AMWS does with what it learned from clause 4 — how it determines the risks and opportunities to be addressed, identifies its environmental aspects and its hazards, sets objectives, and plans changes.
Clauses examined: 6.1.1 actions to address risks and opportunities, 6.1.2 in its three forms — risks and opportunities under ISO 9001, environmental aspects under ISO 14001, hazard identification and assessment under ISO 45001 — 6.1.4 planning action under ISO 14001, 6.2 objectives and planning to achieve them, and 6.3 planning of changes. Clause 6.1.3 compliance obligations is audited in full at IA202615 and is examined here only as a planning input.
1.2 Independence¶
The auditor is an external HSQE consultant engaged through Onyx Operations Ltd. He is not an employee of AMWS and holds no line responsibility for the work audited. SOP 6.2 requires that an auditor does not audit work for which they are also responsible; AMWS has no second competent auditor, and the consultant drafted much of the documented system. The mitigation applied is that no document is tested against its own wording. Each clause is tested against records, against what the people responsible describe doing, and against what can be produced on request. Findings are reviewed and countersigned by a Director, who holds the authority to accept or reject them.
1.3 Note on document states¶
Documents are cited at the issue they stood at on 29/04/2026. The planning registers stood at their 2025 issues and the procedure set at Issue 2; both are cited by reference rather than quoted. The supplier register had been reissued at Issue 4 on 16/04/2026 and is quoted from its revision record.
2. Method and sample¶
| Method | What was covered |
|---|---|
| Document review | POL_HSQE_00 Integrated HSQE Policy Revision 3 · POL_HSQE_21 Risk Assessment Policy Revision 3 · the planning procedure set at Issue 2 · MAN_01 at Revision 2 |
| Registers examined | APP_05 Risk & Opportunity Log at Issue 2 · APP_06 Environmental Aspects at Issue 2 · APP_07 Hazard Identification at Issue 3 · APP_11 HSQE Objectives & KPIs at Issue 2 · APP_15 Lifecycle Analysis at Issue 2 · APP_10 Legal & Compliance Register at Issue 2 · APP_19 Approved Supplier Register at Issue 4 |
| Records sampled | The minuted management review of 27/09/2025, items 6 and 9 · the annual supplier review completed 16/04/2026 · the legal citation verification of 24/04/2026 · the monthly HSQE bulletin of 01/04/2026 |
| Interview | Both Directors, on how a risk gets onto the register, who decides what to do about it, and how they know an objective is on track |
3. Result against each clause¶
| Clause | What the standard requires | Objective evidence examined | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.1.1 Actions to address risks and opportunities | Consider the issues at 4.1 and the requirements at 4.2 and determine the risks and opportunities that need to be addressed to give assurance the system can achieve its intended results, prevent or reduce undesired effects, and achieve improvement | Risks and opportunities are held on a single register at APP_05 covering both operational HSQE risk and wider business risk, so a risk does not fall between two records. Each entry carries a treatment. POL_HSQE_00 Revision 3 carries the commitment the register delivers: "Risk Prevention - Identifying hazards and implementing controls to prevent injury, ill health, quality failures and environmental harm." Treatment effectiveness was taken as a management review input and minuted on 27/09/2025: "Risk mitigation effective. Apprenticeship programme addresses skills shortage. Supply chain risks mitigated through diversification." | Conforms |
| 6.1.2 (ISO 9001) Risks and opportunities determined and addressed | Plan actions to address them, integrate the actions into the system processes, and evaluate their effectiveness | Actions arising from the register are carried into the objectives at APP_11 and into the procedures, rather than held as a separate action list. The supply chain risk is the clearest worked example: it is treated through the approved supplier arrangements, and the treatment was exercised and recorded on 16/04/2026 when the annual supplier review was completed — "2026 annual SAR completed for all approved suppliers — all rated Excellent, no complaints logged during review period." | Conforms |
| 6.1.2 (ISO 14001) Environmental aspects | Determine the environmental aspects of activities, products and services that can be controlled or influenced, and their associated impacts, considering a lifecycle perspective; determine those which have or can have a significant impact | Aspects are held at APP_06 with the lifecycle view at APP_15, covering the aspects the work generates — waste, spillage, fuel use, noise, dust, water use, material storage and traffic. Significance is determined against stated criteria and the significant aspects carry operational control. Examined in full at IA202607 | Conforms |
| 6.1.2 (ISO 45001) Hazard identification and assessment of risks | Establish processes for ongoing and proactive hazard identification, assess OH&S risks from the identified hazards, and assess other risks to the system | Hazards are held at APP_07 with the assessments registered at APP_08 and the assessments themselves held individually. POL_HSQE_21 Revision 3 places the purpose plainly: "This policy ensures systematic identification and control of hazards across all A M Water Services Ltd operations, protecting our workforce and others affected by our activities." Hazard identification is proactive rather than incident-driven — the register carries hazards arising from the work as planned, not only from what has gone wrong. Examined in full at IA202610 and IA202608 | Conforms |
| 6.1.4 (ISO 14001) Planning action | Plan to take action to address significant environmental aspects, compliance obligations and risks and opportunities, and to integrate those actions into system processes and evaluate their effectiveness | Significant aspects carry a control and, where improvement is planned, an objective. Compliance obligations feed planning through the legal register, which carried a dated verification of every citation against primary sources on 24/04/2026. The route from an aspect to a measured objective is in place for the principal aspects; it is not applied consistently across the full aspect set, which is the subject of OBS-01 | Conforms — see OBS-01 |
| 6.2 Objectives and planning to achieve them | Establish objectives at relevant functions and levels; they shall be consistent with the policy, measurable, monitored, communicated and updated; and the organisation shall determine what will be done, what resources are required, who is responsible, when it will be completed and how the results will be evaluated | Objectives are held at APP_11 against the policy commitments, each with a measure, a target and a named owner. POL_HSQE_00 Revision 3 supplies the framework the clause requires: "Continuous Improvement - Setting measurable objectives and regularly reviewing performance through management systems." Performance against each objective was evaluated and minuted at the 27/09/2025 review, which recorded that the objectives were achieved or on track and, in the assessment of the objective set itself, that all objectives were "clearly defined with measurable outcomes" | Conforms |
| 6.3 (ISO 9001) Planning of changes | Where the organisation determines a need for change to the management system, the change shall be carried out in a planned manner, considering the purpose, the integrity of the system, the availability of resources, and the allocation of responsibilities | Change to the system runs through the management of change arrangements and is recorded as a dated, planned decision rather than as drift. The clearest example available at the audit date is the response to the publication of the revised environmental standard, recorded in the bulletin of 01/04/2026 as a planned sequence with a timescale: a gap analysis in the third quarter of 2026 with the formal transition folded into the recertification cycle, rather than an immediate unplanned response | Conforms |
4. Findings¶
4.1 Non-conformities¶
None.
4.2 Observations¶
| Ref | Clause | Observation | Owner | Target | Corrective action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OBS-01 | 6.1.2 with 6.2 | The cross-referencing improvement asked for in the previous cycle has begun. The principal environmental aspects are now explicitly linked to the objective that measures them and to the client programmes they serve. The remaining aspects on the register have not yet had the same treatment, so for most of the aspect set there is no visible line from the aspect to a measure. Extend the linkage across the register | Sean Ashton | 31/08/2026 | CAR-2026-002 |
4.3 Status of the previous audit of this area¶
IA202502 raised an observation on cross-referencing between the aspects register and the objectives, carried as CAR-2025-003. It is rolled forward into CAR-2026-002 rather than closed, because the linkage has been applied to part of the register rather than all of it.
5. Conclusion¶
Planning conforms to clause 6 of all three standards. Risks and opportunities are held on a single register rather than split across two, which is what stops a risk falling into the gap between an operational log and a business log. Aspects and hazards are identified against the work as it is actually done. Objectives are measurable, owned and evaluated annually at management review against recorded results rather than against impression.
The treatment of risk is evidenced by exercise rather than by assertion: the supply chain risk was treated through the supplier arrangements and the treatment was performed and recorded a fortnight before this audit.
One observation was raised, on the completeness of the link between aspects and measures rather than on whether aspects are identified.
6. Recommendations¶
- Extend the aspect-to-objective linkage across the remaining register entries and close CAR-2026-002 on the completed register.
- Keep the combined risk and opportunity register. Splitting operational and business risk is the most common cause of a risk having no owner.
- Record the planned response to a standards change as a dated sequence with a timescale, as was done for the environmental standard. It is what clause 6.3 asks for and it is easy to lose in correspondence.
7. Sign-off¶
| Role | Name | Position | Signature | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auditor | Sean Ashton | HSQE Consultant, Onyx Operations Ltd | S. Ashton | 29/04/2026 |
| Reviewed and accepted | Aaron Mason | Director | A. Mason | 29/04/2026 |