ISO 45001: THE NEW HEALTH & SAFETY STANDARD -

ISO 45001: THE NEW HEALTH & SAFETY STANDARD

ISO recently announced that ISO Committee ISO/PC 283 – Occupational Health & Safety Management Systems, has been formed with an objective to develop and publish an international standard for Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) based on OHSAS 18001. The new standard will be known as ISO 45001. The standard’s publication is still some time off, but the result will hopefully be an up-to-date health and safety management system which will allow practicable and efficient integration with standards such as ISO 14001 and ISO 9001.

This standard, designated as ISO 45001, will establish globally-accepted requirements for third-party certification of an OH&S management system. It is intended to replace the OHSAS 18001 standard.

At the first meeting of the committee ISO/PC 283 in October 2013, an outline project plan for the development and publication of ISO 45001 was created:

ISO/CD 45001 (first committee draft) to be published by May 2014
ISO/DIS 45001 (first draft international standard) to be published by February 2015
ISO/FDIS 45001 (final draft international standard) to be published by March 2016
Final ISO 45001 to be published in October 2016

The new standard will follow the “High-Level Structure” format defined in Annex SL, meaning that it will be aligned with the revised versions of ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 scheduled for publication in 2015.

ISO/PC 283 – the committee responsible for ISO 45001 – held their inaugural meeting in October. It was agreed that, ISO 45001 will fall in line with the Annex SL high-level structure,. This means that all the management system standards will eventually be aligned. This decision was taken by the ISO Joint Technical Coordination Group (JTCG) in an effort to make life easier for organisations who wish to have a single management system.

This will mean the structure of the standard will be:

Scope
Normative references
Terms and definitions
Context of the organization
Leadership
Planning
Support
Operation
Performance evaluation
Improvement

Moving forward, the committee established a plan for the development and publication of the standard:

ISO/CD 45001 (first committee draft) to be published by May 2014
ISO/DIS 45001 (first draft international standard) to be published by February 2015
ISO/FDIS 45001 (final draft international standard) to be published by March 2016
ISO 45001 to be published in October 2016

The next meeting for the ISO/PC 283 committee will be held in March 2014 in Morocco in order to get the working draft of ISO 45001. It will then be open for comment, in order to ensure the standard reflects the needs of users around the world.

With poor health and safety management costing around 4% of global GDP, the new international standard’s impact has the potential to save lives, reduce accidents and improve employee morale. Its impact on industry will be closely watched by business leaders and safety professionals around the world. If done correctly it has the potential to improve safety standards, performance and ultimately reduce accident rates. However if not managed properly it could end up being just a paper exercise and a new certificate on the wall.

Sources

Submitted by Ronan O’Sullivan, Antaris Consulting