Management of Health and Safety, BS 18001

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LEN HALL CHEMICAL CONSULTANT
HEALTH AND SAFETY ADVICE TO CHEMICAL AND DISTRIBUTION INDUSTRIES

Management of Health and Safety BS 18001

British Standards are well accepted in the areas of product related requirements, they are also well known in the area of quality and to an increasing amount environmental management.

The background against which the requirement for improvement of occupational health and safety performance is one of some 18 million working days lost due to work related accidents at an estimated cost to industry of 11 billion pounds each year. A significant burden for the country, employers and employees to cope with, both in financial terms and suffering for the injured.

The British Standards Institute has developed the ISO9001 quality approach applying its methodology to occupational health and safety. It is by no accident that it follows the same principles of setting out your intentions, involving those who can best influence the outcome, monitoring the progress and reviewing the process on a regular basis. Those that are familiar with either ISO9001 or ISO14001 should find OHSAS 18001 a well-fitted addition to their management toolkit.

The key elements of OHSAS 18001 are as follows:

Health and safety policy.
Legislative review.
Set health and safety objectives.
Identify management roles.
Communication.
Establish control of documents.
Emergency response procedure.
Keep records of audits and reviews.

Risk assessment for all activities.
Establish audit programme.
Management programme to meet objectives.
Employee awareness of safety objectives.
Document the health and safety management system.
Planning and maintenance of control measures.
Measure performance.
Periodic top management review

Establish management responsibility for investigation of and carrying out corrective action arising from accidents, incidents and non-conformances.

There is a direct comparison with the quality and environmental standards. If you would be interested in developing your systems to meet this new standard and improve occupational health and safety give me a call and I will be glad to assist you in achieving this goal.