ISO 45001 on track to be published in the first quarter of 2018

The International Labour Organization estimates that 7,600 people die every day from work-related activities. That’s 2.78 million deaths worldwide. Of those, more than 380,000 are fatal accidents and 2.4 million are the result of occupational diseases.

ISO 45001 – Occupational health and safety management systems – Requirements with guidance for use, aims to help organisations improve their occupational health and safety performance, prevent work-related injury and ill health, and provide safe and healthy workplaces. It is expected to be published in March 2018.

After its publication, BS OHSAS 18001 (Occupational health and safety management systems) will be withdrawn. Organisations that are currently certified to OHSAS 18001 will have a three-year window to migrate their occupational health and safety management system to meet the new requirements of ISO 45001.

David Smith, Chair of ISO/PC 283, the committee developing the standard, told QW that ISO 45001 will complement other existing management systems standards including ISO 9001:2015 (Quality Management Systems) and ISO 14001:2015 (Environmental Management Systems) because it is based on Annex SL, which provides an identical high-level structure, common terms and definitions, and identical core text. “It should allow [for easy] integration,” he said. “Those with quality systems will find the requirements on support, performance evaluation, improvement, have lots of commonalities, and there are lots of commonality in the sections on context and leadership.”

Other key themes of the final draft include leadership and worker participation, the role of management representative, context of the organisation and risk-based thinking.