For beginners, OHSAS stands for Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series. OHSAS 18001 specifications were first issued in the year 1999, to enable organizations to assess themselves against the OH&S risks prevailing in their workplace and get themselves certified. However during the intervening period the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards underwent revisions. The OHSAS specifications were due for revision from that point onwards. Initial meeting of group was held in Oct 2006 and SECOND DRAFT was proposed in Nov 2006. Second meeting was held in China in March 2007 and comments from 40 countries were reviewed. The STANDARD(not the specifications) was issued in July 2007. There have been some key changes in the standard which has come out in July 2007. Changes have been done basically to align the OHSMS (OHSAS 18001:2007) with QMS (ISO 9001:2000) and EMS (ISO 14001:2004). Prime intention is to facilitate organizations to move towards Integrated Management system, should they desire to move in that direction. Key focus areas in the revised standard are: 1. Health. 2. Tolerable risk and acceptable risk. 3. Accident and Incident. 4. Hazard and Risk assessment process. 5. Management of change. 6. Compliance evaluation and OH&S performance. 7. Need for continual improvement. 8. Workplace or ‘Place of work’. Health and well being of employees is one of the two strong focus areas in the OHSAS standard. The establishment of OH&S system comprising of Policy, Planning, Implementation and Operation, Checking and corrective action and Management review is the fundamental step. The definition of Occupational health and safety as per standard OHSAS 18001:2007 “conditions and factors that affect, or could affect, the health and safety of employees or other workers (including temporary workers and contractor personnel), visitors, or any other person in the workplace.” Above definition illustrated in 2007 standard now includes “conditions and factors that could affect the health and safety of employees or other workers”. Emphasis is also on the conditions and factors which are presently not getting focus or raising concerns but they are likely to affect the health and safety in due course . Another, key change depicting strong focus on health is definition of workplace. Place of work has now become workplace. The definition of workplace as given in the standard is “ any physical location in which work related activities are performed under the control of Organization”. The ambit has widened and now includes personnel traveling, in transit, working at premises of the client or customer or at working at home.” This is a landmark change. With changing working environment, economic conditions and our transgression to borderless world, the OH&S management system definitely has widened and covers all the activities in its influence.
Source: qmsforyou.blogspot.com
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