Good morning Hendlem

I'm with Roundtuit. 

Most of the items on your agenda have nothing to do with getting an ISO accreditation but rather complying with statutory requirements for the management of health, safety and environmental risks. 

To be honest if conditions are as poorly managed as your list would suggest then I think you should probably put ISO standards to one side until some of the basics have been dealt with. 

The regulators are NOT going to take enforcement action against your organisation for not having a piece of paper saying accredited to 14001, but they might well take enforcement action if e.g. your tanks are not adequately bunded or your COSHH regime is inadequate.

Almost each of the items would need to be costed individually and it would be impossible to make a sensible estimate of what is needed without seeing the sites, processes and the precautions that are currently in place.

Good luck, Peter

About the certification cost.  To get the certification you first need a Stage 1 audit then a Stage 2 audit.  Then there will be periodic audits over  three years. Then every three years a longer recertification audit.  How long each of these audits takes is dependent on the size, risk and complexity of your operations.  A certifying body will be able to give you a quote covering each element.  To prepare this they will need to know how many employees in each capacity (admin, operational, etc), a short description of your operations perhaps a little more detailed than the one you have given above, and what you consider your main environmental risks to be.

On the development of the management system.  This will take loads of time, not just by you but by staff across the organisation.  You will need to include an estimate of the costs of this time.

Remember that to get ISO 14001 you don't have to prove that you have good environmental standards, but you do need to show you are fulfilling your legal requirements.  As mentioned already, if you don't already have things such as bunding and waste records you are failing at much more than ISO 14001, so I agree that the costs of this are not really the costs of ISO 14001 but the costs of doing business legally.  I think it's important to distinguish between the two when making the case for spending the money.

Here are my tips.

Make sure your provider is UKAS accredited for ISO 14001 certification (such as the ones mentioned above).  There are some much cheaper ones that aren't, but they are not credible and your customers may be unhappy with your claims to be certified if the certifying body isn't accredited.

Do you already have ISO 9001?  If so then your Quality manager will be able to help you with ISO 14001 as the standards have the same structure.  Also, there will be future efficiencies and cost savings in getting the same certifying body for both.

I agree that it is a poor choice to buy a management system from a consultant.  However, that doesn't mean that a consultant couldn't help you to develop your own. A consultant who has done this kind of thing before can help you to generate some of the documents you will need such as policy, legal register, context analysis, aspects and impacts analysis, internal audit plan.

The starting point is a gap analysis which it sounds as if you have started.  Some of the certifying bodies also offer courses with titles such as "Introduction to ISO 14001" and "Implementing ISO 14001".  I did BSI's "Implementing OHSAS 18001" back in the day (you can see how back in the day that was from the title) and found it useful in developing a management system.