Normec Certification awards the Van Gogh Museum with ISO 14001 certification
Environmentally conscious business practices are possible in all sectors, as demonstrated by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The museum is the second in the Netherlands to hold an ISO 14001 certificate. Normec Certification carried out the audit.
Environmental management as part of BREEAM
The Van Gogh Museum houses the largest collection of Van Gogh’s works in the world. The museum comprises two buildings: the Rietveld Building and the Kurokawa Wing. The glass main entrance connects the two buildings. The museum attracts around one and a half million visitors from all over the world every year. Robert Jan Pruijn is responsible for management and maintenance at the Van Gogh Museum. Part of this involves BREEAM certification. This also includes ISO 14001, he explains.
“Our aim is to introduce as many people as possible to the works and ideas of Vincent van Gogh. We want to preserve his works in good condition for as long as possible. This also involves research into, for example, the use of colour and materials. To preserve the works properly, a very strict climate control regime is required, and we monitor the incidence and composition of light. But we want to do everything we do in a sustainable way. That is why we have BREEAM certification for our building. Part of this involves demonstrating that we implement sustainable policies in the field of environmental management, such as when working with hazardous substances in our restoration workshop. That is why we wanted to achieve ISO 14001 certification, as evidence of this.”
Robert Jan Pruijn - Van Gogh Museum
Thanks to this certification, we have moved from promise to proof.
A relaxed atmosphere, tough questions
Implementing an environmental management system in your organisation is not something you do on a whim. It requires a great deal of preparation. The Van Gogh Museum brought in a consultancy firm for this, explains Robert Jan: “We first carried out an internal audit to see how far we’d got. That looked promising, so we were able to invite an external certification body to conduct the actual audit. We compared various firms and Normec Certification came out on top for us. Both in terms of turnaround time and approach, as well as the costs.”
The entire audit process took about a week. First, a preliminary assessment on paper, followed by four consecutive days of on-site auditing. It was intensive, but everything went smoothly, says Robert Jan: “The auditors from Normec Certification were pleasantly surprised, which was great. Of course, there were a few minor areas for improvement, but nothing that would prevent us from being certified. I think the audit went very well. It was conducted in a very pleasant, organic way. It is still a kind of test, but it was also very relaxed. The auditors from Normec Certification would have a chat with you and, in the meantime, ask a pointed question. So they really knew what they were doing with us.”
Robert Jan Pruijn - Van Gogh Museum
Normec Certification really knew what they were doing when they worked with us.
From promise to proof
During the audit, it became clear that the Van Gogh Museum already naturally met many of the requirements for ISO 14001 certification. It was, as it were, already ingrained in the organisation’s DNA, according to Robert Jan: “It’s no surprise that the outcome of the audit was very positive. We had many things in order well before the audit. But thanks in part to the audit by Normec Certification, these have been further refined. And the ISO 14001 certification is a structured tool for us to keep ourselves on our toes. It gives us really concrete tools to achieve our sustainability objectives. What’s more, we can now show the outside world how we have organised our organisation. In this way, we have moved from promise to proof.”
To remain certified, the management system is assessed annually and recertified every three years. However, the Van Gogh Museum sees this annual audit primarily as an opportunity for continuous improvement. As Robert Jan puts it: “We deliberately use these moments to make further improvements. Personally, I look forward to our collaboration with Normec Certification with confidence.”
