ISO 45001 Development Reaches Major Milestone

16th October 2015

Meeting in Geneva in September, the project committee confirmed that the internationally-agreed ISO 45001 has reached its next major milestone and is now moving to the Draft International Standard (DIS) stage, which means it may be released on the planned publication date in October 2016.

When implemented, ISO 45001 will apply to all organisations globally and aims to help prevent injury and ill health, and work related fatalities, proactively improving occupational health and safety performance.

The standard which is set to replace BS OHSAS 18001, has a greater emphasis on leadership, worker involvement, context and documented information, focussing heavily on continual improvement; hierarchy of control; risk and opportunities; compliance status; supply chain; and KPIs.

Richard Jones, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at IOSH said: “There has been a tremendous amount of international cooperation on this, resolving comments and issues and improving the text and guidance and it’s fantastic that the critical milestone of Draft International Standard has now been confirmed. This keeps this important standard on track for publication by the end of 2016.”

Once the draft format has been submitted to the ISO Secretariat, it will be circulated to ISO members who will then have 3 months to provide any comments and vote on the draft. Following this the standard will either be approved for publication or go through a final international draft stage.

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