Critical Features of an Auditable Management System for an ISO 9000-Compatible Occupational Health and Safety Standard

Abstract

An International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001: 1994-harmonized occupational health and safety (OHS) management system has been written at the University of Michigan, and reviewed, revised, and accepted under the direction of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSMS) Task Force and the Board of Directors. This system is easily adaptable to the ISO 14001 format and to both OHS and environmental management system applications. As was the case with ISO 9001: 1994, this system is expected to be compatible with current production quality and OHS quality systems and standards, have forward compatibility for new applications, and forward flexibility, with new features added as needed. Since ISO 9001: 1987 and 9001: 1994 have been applied worldwide, the incorporation of harmonized OHS and environmental management system components should be acceptable to business units already performing first-party (self-) auditing, and second-party (contract qualification) auditing. This article explains the basis of this OHS management system, its relationship to ISO 9001 and 14001 standards, the philosophy and methodology of an ISO-harmonized system audit, the relationship of these systems to traditional OHS audit systems, and the authors' vision of the future for application of such systems.

Assessment of occupational safety and health programs in small businesses

“…OSH program guidelines have been suggested by industry, OSH professionals, and voluntary standards bodies [OSHA, 1989;Meridian Research, 1994;Gardner and Winder, 1997;Levine and Dyjack, 1997;; OSHA and U.S. Department of Labor, 1998;Farabaugh, 2000;Podgorski, 2000;Redinger et al, 2002a,b], but few have been translated into assessment instruments and applied systematically in the field to yield normative data on the extent of implementation and characteristics of existing OSH programs. What literature is available is generally not peer-reviewed (e.g., government reports), and even the peer-reviewed literature tends to not fully report on assessment methods, ostensibly due to proprietary interests [Redinger et al, 2002a,b].…”

Risk Level Based Management System: A Control Banding Model for Occupational Health and Safety Risk Management in a Highly Regulated Environment

“…Since their growth in the 1990s, they continue to gain importance in measuring performance and OSHH management success 2) . The three main components of an OHSMS common worldwide are establishing input parameters, risk assessment and control, and management and evaluation [2][3][4][5][6] . Taken together, they comprise an ORM basis for fundamental and comprehensive OSHH regulatory adherence.…”

Management Systems Integration for Organizational Sustainability: Quality, Environmental, Occupational Health and Safety, and Energy

“…Though in 1990s, the certification bodies were not promoting IMS, mainly due to business reason, yet, IMS does result in reduction of the auditing fee due to the commonalities of the requirement [21]. In addition to this, there are also discussions on ISO harmonized and ISO non-harmonized system, in which, methods of auditing and report writing were discussed [23].…”