The scope of the management system

The scope of registration and certification will need to reflect precisely and clearly the activities covered by your organization’s management system; any exclusion to non-applicable requirements of the standards should be documented and justified in the manual. No single business-related activity should exist outside of the scope. You should discuss the scope of registration prior to, during the early stages of contact with the registrar, or during the selection process.

From a review of the nature of your business’s operations, products and services, the scope of the management system should be apparent by the extent of the processes and controls that your organization has already established.

Look for confirmation that your organization has determined the boundaries and applicability of the management system to establish its scope with reference to any external and internal issues, the requirements of relevant interested parties, and the nature of your organization’s products and services. Consideration of the boundaries and applicability of the management system can include:

1. The range of products and services;
2. Different sites and activities;
3. External provision of processes, products and services;
4. Common support provided by centralised functions;
5. Processes, procedures, instructions, or site-specific requirements.

The scope of your management system may include the whole of the organization, specific and identified functions within the organization, specific sections of the organization, or one or more functions across a group of organizations. Auditors will challenge your organization if any activities, products, and services that would likely have a significant impact on the environment or those that impact health and safety are omitted from the scope. Your organization’s scope determinations should be reasonable and consistently applied.

Ensure that your organization has considered its degree of control and influence over its activities, products, and services from a life cycle perspective. The degree of control needs to be determined for environmental aspects associated with such things as procured goods and services, outsourced processes, product performance requirements, end of life treatment (recycling, disposal, etc.).

The management system scope must be retained as documented information in accordance with, usually within the management system manual. The scope statement is normally shown on the certificate, for most registrars. You may not design your products because your customers supply product specifications and drawings. In which case you can exclude the product design processes and requirements.