The main difference is the certifying body – IEMA is the Institute of Environmental Managers and Assessors and IRCA is the International Register of Certificated Auditors.

The IEMA course is aimed Environmental Professionals who wish to be competent to audit and covers detailed environmentally focused material additional to auditing (e.g biodiversity, life-cycle assessment etc.).

The IRCA course is aimed at Auditing Professionals and is very focused on auditing skills for 2nd and 3rd party auditors.

In essence there is not a major difference between these courses, when considering which to attend decide on which may be better recognized in your field (IEMA for Environmental Professionals who audit and IRCA for professional auditors).’

In addition here is a blogpost on the differences between the three IEMA Environmental courses we run at SQT. http://sqt.ie/wordpress/?p=1154

Hope this is of help to you. If you have any further queries, please just ask.

Lily

I’m planning to undergo training as an EMS auditor. However, I hope I can get clarification on the difference between IEMA approved and IRCA approved ISO 14000 EMS course.

Are they the same? Is the IEMA version more advance than the IRCA version?

Thank you!