OHSAS 18001 new edition published
As detailed within June’s In Touch a new edition of OHSAS 18001 Occupational health and safety management systems - Requirements standard was published at the beginning of July 2007.
The first edition was published in 1999 and there have been a number of significant changes since this date. The changes reflect the widespread use and experience of the standard in more than 80 countries, and by approximately 16000 certified organizations.
Amongst the changes are much greater emphasis on “health” rather than just “safety”, and alignment to ISO 14001:2004 which will help organizations who wish to develop “integrated management systems”.
For those organizations that have already achieved certification to OHSAS 18001:1999, or are in the final stages of achieving it, a two year “transition” period has been agreed, in order to allow them to make the change to using the new standard. The transition period will end on 1 July 2009.
The key changes between OHSAS 18001:2007 and OHSAS 18001:1999 include:
- The importance of “health” has now been given greater emphasis.
- OHSAS 18001 now refers to itself as a standard, not a specification, or document, as in the earlier edition.
This reflects the increasing adoption of OHSAS 18001 as the basis for national standards on occupational health and safety management systems.
- The “Plan-Do-Check-Act” model diagram is only given in the Introduction, in its entirety, and not also as sectional diagrams at the start of each major clause.
- Reference publications in Clause 2 have been limited to purely international documents.
- New definitions have been added, and existing definitions revised.
- Significant improvement in alignment with ISO 14001:2004 throughout the standard and improved compatibility with ISO 9001:2000.
- The term “tolerable risk” has been replaced by the term “acceptable risk”
- The term “accident” is now included in the term “incident”
- The definition of the term “hazard” no longer refers to “damage to property or damage to the workplace environment”
- It is now considered that such “damage” is not directly related to occupational health and safety management, which is the purpose of this OHSAS Standard, and that it is included in the field of asset management. Instead, the risk of such “damage” having an effect on occupational health and safety should be identified through the organization’s risk assessment process, and be controlled through the application of appropriate risk controls.
- Sub-clauses 4.3.3 and 4.3.4 have been merged, into a single clause 4.3.3 “Objectives and Programme(s)” in line with ISO 14001:2004.
- A new requirement has been introduced for the consideration of the hierarchy of controls as part of OH&S planning
- Management of change is now more explicitly addressed
- A new clause on the “Evaluation of compliance” has been introduced, as per ISO 14001:2004
- New requirements have been introduced for participation and consultation
- New requirements have been introduced for the investigation of incidents
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Source www.nqa.com (accessed 01/08/07)