ISO OHSMS Standard – What Now?
ISO has established a Project Committee, ISO PC 283. This PC is charged with developing this standard. The standard will be entitled – Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems – Requirements. The number designation has not yet been announced.Based on information in the New Work Item Proposal (NWIP), this standard development effort will start later this year with a meeting in the U.K. and conclude with the publishing of an ISO Final Standard – likely in 2016.
Once published, this ISO standard will replace other country-specific OHSMS standards such as ANSI Z10. It will also replace OHSAS 18001.
The standard will be a specification standard intended to be used for third-party certification. This means it will have auditable “shall” clauses. The development of the standard will be governed by the requirements set out in the ISO directives, including the requirements for management system standards set out in Annex SL. This means it will have the same top-level structure, use the same terminology and have many of the same core requirements as the other ISO management system standards.
Each ISO member body will have an opportunity to participate and to designate individual experts to represent it in this international standard development process. These experts will be the ones who draft the language for the OHSMS standard. Consensus among the experts will be reached in a series of international meetings where the content of the standard is discussed and agreed upon. Opportunity will also be provided for others to review one or more committee drafts (i.e. CDs) of the standard and to provide comments to the designated experts for their consideration.
In the United States, the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) has applied to ANSI to become the TAG Administrator. The activities of this committee will be governed by the ANSI rules for U.S. Technical Advisory Groups. The members of this TAG will determine the U.S. position for the international standard development meetings held by PC 283 and designate the members of the TAG who will be the U.S. Experts.
Although the ISO OHSMS standard will be developed as a voluntary consensus standard, it is very likely that it will be incorporated into or referenced in other documents. This may include supply-chain contracts, sustainability frameworks and governmental regulations. It is this use of the standard that may make conformance with the ISO OHSMS standard mandatory.