National Occupational Standards for Environmental Auditors

January 28, 2010

By Tony Tarsitano

For those of us that work in the environmental industry, the term national occupational standards (NOS) may be familiar. These are standards that define the skills and knowledge required by practitioners to be competent in their jobs...

NOS are written as a list of statements describing the actual day-to-day work required within specified fields of environmental specialization (called "sub-sectors"). NOS are developed and maintained by the Environmental Careers Organization Canada (ECO Canada), in consultation with industry, and are updated every five years to reflect the evolving requirements of environmental practice.

In 2008, ECO Canada embarked on developing NOS for environmental auditors to help with the certification process. Oversight and guidance is provided by the Auditing Certification Sub-Committee (the body responsible for the development and maintenance of the certification schemes for EMS(A) and EMS (LA)). In 2009, ECO Canada developed draft auditor competency statements, solicited input from focus groups and validated the results via an online survey. So where are we today? The auditor NOS are now in the final validation stage, and once the validation is complete, a set of competencies will be available for the auditing certification process.

The establishment of NOS for the profession will strengthen credibility.

In accordance with our mandate, the Auditing Association of Canada has played and will continue to play an active role during this process to ensure that the interests of the members are well represented. Two members of the AAC's Board of Directors participate on the Auditing Certification Sub-Committee. Additionally many AAC members have taken the opportunity to contribute their views in the online survey and have participated in validation focus groups.

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