What is ISO 50003 about?
ISO 50003 is a part of European standard which specifies requirements for competence, consistency and impartiality in the auditing and energy management systems (EnMS) for bodies providing these services.
In order to ensure the effectiveness of energy management systems auditing, ISO 50003 addresses the auditing process, the competence requirements for the personal involved in the process for EnMS, the audit time and multi-site sampling.
Note: ISO 50003 deals with EnMS audits for certification purposes, but it does not deal with energy audits where the purpose is to establish a systematic analysis of energy consumption and energy use,
Who is ISO 50003 for?
ISO 50003 on requirements for audit and certification of energy management systems (EnMS) is relevant to:
- Manufacturing of computer tools for energy management system
- Bodies conducting audit and certification of energy management systems
- Companies dealing with energy management systems
Why should you use ISO 50003?
An energy management system, it is a system in which computer-aided tools are used by the operators of electric utility grids to control, monitor, and optimize the performance of generation or transmission systems.
ISO 50003 provides you the requirements for the specific technical area of energy management systems (EnMS) that are needed to ensure the effectiveness of the audit and certification. These requirements help you support the efforts of the organization to continually improve energy performance including energy efficiency, energy use and energy consumption, and the EnMS. In particular, ISO 50003 addresses the additional requirements necessary for the audit process. It also covers the planning process, the initial certification audit, conducting the on-site audit, auditor competence, audit time and multi-site sampling, which will help you audit energy management systems (EnMS) in a standardized manner.
What’s changed since the last update?
BS ISO 50003:2021 supersedes BS ISO 50003:2014, which is withdrawn.
BS ISO 50003:2021 includes:
- The definitions have been updated to include the audit time, the duration of the audit and terms related to multi-site audits;
- The phrase “maintained documented information” has been used to represent procedures, work instructions or other forms of documents that provide the who, what, when, how or why information
- The phrase “retained documented information” or “record of audit evidence” has been used to represent records that demonstrate or provide evidence of the execution of a requirement.
- The structure has been updated to align with ISO/IEC 170211:2015, the phrase “man-days” has been changed to “audit days” and the weighted values for complexity have been modified
- For audit day calculations, the number of energy types have been changed to those that comprise at least 80 % of total consumption, the sampling requirements for multi-site EnMS have been updated. the technical areas have been removed and requirements for technical competency added

