A new ISO standard, ISO 45001, on occupational health and safety management systems is expected to be available towards the end of 2016 and will replace OHSAS 18001.

Organisations will need to look beyond its immediate health and safety issues and take into account what the wider society expects of it. They will have to think about their contractors and suppliers as well as how their work might affect their neighbours in the surrounding area. This is much wider than just focusing on the conditions for internal employees and means organisations cannot just contract out risk.

The standard will be aligned with ISO 9001 (Quality Management) and ISO 14001 (Environmental Management) and there is a hope that the ISO name and recognition will give further credibility to the standard and drive wider adoption.

There also appears to be involvement from countries across the globe, from Europe and America, Africa, Asia and South America, helping to create a tool that will work for everyone, indeed there has also been strong involvement from the International Labour Organization (ILO) something that should help the standard become a tool that can be used by any organisation, within any regulatory framework, in any country. This is important as certainly we at Cardinus are experiencing a greater demand from organisations to develop global safety management systems and standards.

Some of the anticipated changes include

• New focus on the “Context” of the organisation
• Understanding the Internal and external issues
• Needs of interested parties
• Strategic approach to OHS management
• Greater emphasis on integration of OHS in management of the business
• Greater involvement and emphasis on senior management leadership
• More emphasis on the concept of risk management
• Legal & other requirements more explicit
• Greater focus of need to demonstrate compliance
• Greater emphasis on hierarchy of controls
• Management of change specifically included
• Outsourcing and procurement more explicit
• Greater flexibility in how organisation’s document and structure their OH&S management system
• Requirement for “documented information” rather than documented procedures and records
• Preventive action no longer included as standard is preventive

Cardinus have recently been accredited to OHSAS18001 and ISO 14001 with an integrated system. We have also assisted other organisations in the development of their safety management system to the standard and subsequent accreditation, something that we can help your organisation with.

In addition to helping develop documentation we are able to provide guidance on the document control process.