Management, Quality, Environment and Safety

ISO 9001 is an international standard for quality management, applicable by all organizations operating in any business sector.
It is based on eight principles of quality management (all essential for good company management).

• Customer focus
• Leadership
• People involvement
• Process approach
• Systematic approach to management
• Continual improvement
• Factual approach to decision making
• Mutually beneficial supplier relations
• What are the main benefits?

It demonstrates the company’s commitment to quality and customer satisfaction

• It ensures that the products and services offered by the company actually take into account the needs of the customer and the mandatory and regulatory requirements
• It allows the company to measure its progress towards the continual improvement of its performance within the market using a reference standard as a benchmark.
• It helps improve company results in organizational terms

The new edition of the ISO 9001 standard was published on 23rd September 2015.
The revision of the standard falls within the parameters of significant change, which involves the family of
ISO standards on Management Systems and whose primary objective is to create a common “High Level
Structure” among the standards.
The new edition of ISO 9001 is more open to companies that provide services and tackled the greater
complexity of the current market, taking into account aspects such as stakeholder expectations (ethics,
sustainability…), the fragmentation of supply chains, etc.

ISO 14001 is part of a series of international standards, which concern Environmental Management Systems, applicable to all types of Organizations.
ISO 14001, the most widespread Environmental Management Systems standard in the world, is based on the principles of a management system that includes the stages of planning, implementation, control and improvement actions; the application of ISO 14001 defines the most important requirements to identify, control and monitor the environmental aspects of any organization with an environmental policy.

What are its goals/benefits?

The immediate advantages of adopting an ISO 14001 Environmental Management System include:

• greater trust from Customers, investors, the public and community, thanks to the guarantee of reliability for the proven commitment
• better control of costs and savings on raw materials and energy consumption
• clarity in management and ease in applying for permits and environmental authorizations
• reduction in insurance premiums linked to the likelihood of environmental accidents
• reduction in the financial guarantees where required under current legislation.

The new edition of the ISO 14001 standard was published on 15th September 2015.
The revision of the standard falls within the parameters of significant change, which involves the family of ISO standards on Management Systems and whose primary objective is to create a common “High Level Structure” among the standards.
The new edition of ISO 14001, which had remained virtually unchanged since its publication in 1996, introduces major changes that set the standard in line with the times and with today’s environmental challenges.

What is EMAS?
EMAS registration (acronym of Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) indicates compliance of a company or site with the provisions of European Regulation no. 1221/2009 aimed at favouring a more rational management of the environmental aspects of the organization on the basis not only of compliance with legal limits, but also on the continual improvement of its environmental performance, on the active involvement of employees and on transparency with institutions and the general public.

Who can apply for EMAS registration?
EMAS is a voluntary scheme that is open to organizations (both companies and public bodies) and sites that intend to evaluate and implement their environmental performance and provide information to the public.

What is the purpose of EMAS registration?
Obtaining EMAS registration and, therefore, the possibility of using the logo, attests adherence to the principles expressed in the Regulation and is an indicator of the quality standard and the environmental commitment by the registered company or site.

Who issues EMAS registration?
Pursuant to Regulation No. 1121/2009, each Member State of the European Union designates a competent body to issue such registration. In Italy, issuance of EMAS registration is entrusted to the Interministerial Committee for Ecolabel and Ecoaudit which works alongside the ISPRA (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale – Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research) and various Regional Agencies (ARPA) and Provincial Agencies (APPA) for Environmental Protection.

How does a company obtain EMAS registration?
In order to join EMAS, an organization must, first of all, carry out an environmental analysis of its activities, in order to assess its environmental impact. Based on this analysis, the organization concerned must establish its own environmental policy. The latter, normally outlined by senior management, is nothing more than a document with which the organization specifies the commitments, objectives and actions it intends to pursue in order to improve its environmental performance.

Once it has established its environmental policy, the organization must develop a specific environmental programme, containing the measures that must be adopted in order to reach the targets set with the environmental policy, and its own environmental management system (EMS), which is a set of procedures and requirements that enable it to highlight the environmental aspects affected by the different production phases, to assess the environmental impacts of the latter, to define the methods of control and verification and, therefore, to establish which actions to take in order to guarantee the continual improvement of its own environmental performance. The purpose of the EMS is therefore to ensure that the quality of the product and the production process respect the surrounding environment.

At this point, the organization concerned must proceed systematically and periodically with objective and documented verification (the so-called auditing) of its environmental performance and, therefore, of the efficiency of the EMS it has adopted. It must issue an environmental statement that is announced to the public that includes: the description of the environmental aspects of the organization itself and its environmental performance, the environmental policy document, the statement of the organization’s environmental objectives and targets, and the description of the EMS. The statement prepared in this manner must be verified by a specific independent accredited environmental verifier, which, in the event of a positive outcome, then validates it. Finally, with the validated environmental statement, the organization may submit a request to the Ecolabel-Ecoaudit Committee to be registered on the EU EMAS register and, once registered, can use the EMAS logo.

The publication of a new standard, ISO 45001: 2018, on workplace health and safety management systems has allowed to overcome the English OHSAS 18001 standard, becoming an international ISO standard.
The new standard applies to any organization, regardless of size, sector and the nature of its activities and is designed to be integrated into existing management processes: in fact, it adopts the same “high level structure” – HLS) of the other ISO standards on management systems such as UNI EN ISO 9001 (quality management) and UNI EN ISO 14001 (environmental management).
Compliance with the international standard ISO 45001 (Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Specification) ensures compliance with the requirements for the Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems and allows an Organization to better assess the risks and improve its performance, considering carefully its context and its interlocutors.

L’Attestazione SOA è la certificazione obbligatoria per la partecipazione a gare d’appalto per l’esecuzione di appalti pubblici di lavori, ovvero un documento necessario e sufficiente a comprovare, in sede di gara, la capacità dell’impresa di eseguire, direttamente o in subappalto, opere pubbliche di lavori con importo a base d’asta superiore a €.150.000,00; essa attesta e garantisce il possesso da parte dell’impresa del settore delle costruzioni di tutti i requisiti previsti dalla attuale normativa in ambito di Contratti Pubblici di lavori.

L’Attestazione SOA ha validità quinquennale (sempre che ne venga verificata la validità al terzo anno dal primo rilascio) e viene rilasciata a seguito di un’istruttoria di validazione dei documenti prodotti dall’impresa, facenti capo agli ultimi dieci esercizi di attività dell’impresa (dieci anni di lavori ed i migliori cinque esercizi tra gli ultimi dieci) da appositi Organismi di Attestazione, ovvero società autorizzate ad operare dall’Autorità per la Vigilanza sui Contratti Pubblici (AVCP).

L’Attestazione SOA qualifica l’azienda ad appaltare lavori per categorie di opere e per classifiche di importi.

Le categorie di opere in cui si potrà ottenere la Qualificazione sono 52:

• 13 di esse rappresentano opere di carattere generale (edilizia civile e industriale, fogne e acquedotti, strade, restauri, etc.)
• 39 di esse sono riconducibili ad opere specializzate (impianti, restauri di superfici decorate, scavi, demolizioni, arredo urbano, finiture tecniche, finiture in legno, in vetro e in gesso, arginature etc.).

La categoria di opere è legata all’attività aziendale ed alla tipologia dei lavori eseguiti dall’impresa durante il suddetto periodo di riferimento.

Le classifiche di qualificazione sono 10; esse sono identificate da un numero romano e da un corrispondente controvalore, espresso in euro:

• I fino a euro 258.000
• II fino a euro 516.000
• III fino a euro 1.033.000
• III bis fino a euro 1.500.000
• IV fino a euro 2.582.000
• IV bis fino a euro 3.500.000
• V fino a euro 5.165.000
• VI fino a euro 10.329.000
• VII fino a euro 15.494.000
• VIII oltre euro 15.494.000

Esse abilitano l’impresa a partecipare ad appalti per importi pari alla relativa classifica accresciuta di un quinto (cioè incrementata del 20%).

La classifica di importo è ovviamente commisurata alla capacità tecnica ed economica dell’impresa.

Per Qualificazioni in classifiche maggiori alla II è necessario dimostrare il possesso di un Sistema di Qualità aziendale, certificato secondo la norma UNI EN ISO 9001.

L’Organismo di Attestazione, in sede di istruttoria di qualificazione, è tenuto a verificare la veridicità e la sostanza di tutte le dichiarazioni e di tutti i documenti prodotti dall’impresa prima del rilascio dell’Attestazione SOA, sia attraverso l’interrogazione di sistemi informativi, sia contattando direttamente l’Ente competente.