Comments on: OHSAS 18001 & ISO’s Risk Management Standards

By: Thea

Thea — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:30:55 +0000

You are correct in the difficulty in creating an “inventory” of all OH&S hazards and evaluating the risk associated with each one – parallel to the approach often taken in identifying environmental aspects and impacts for ISO 14001. This is not an OHSAS 18001 requirement.

The intent is for an organization to use approaches that are appropriate to it. To quote the OHSAS 18002 guidance – “Each organization should choose approaches that are appropriate to its scope, nature and size, and meet its needs it terms of detail, complexity, time, cost, and availability of reliable data.” The choice of methodology to be used for the hazard identification and risk assessment is up to the organization (taking into account any applicable legal requirements that may limit the approaches that can be used).

What is enough? That the approaches chosen, taken together, are comprehensive, i.e. they cover the OH&S hazards within the defined scope of the OH&S management system.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:46:14 +0000

Interesting questions. I have another one… (which also relates to the post: ‘OH&S Risk Assessment is NOT a Single Process’ ):
As mentionned, to meet the OHSAS 18001 requirements, an organization must:
-Identify its OH&S hazards
-Assess the risks associated with the OH&S hazards that are identified
-Determine the controls that are necessary to reduce OH&S risks to an acceptable level

Knowing that in the latest versions of the standards (9001:2000, 14001:2004 and OHSAS 18001), an effort has been made to ensure that MS were efficient and oriented on the performance of the organization, my question is:

AS PER THE 2007, VERSION of OHSAS 18K1, IS IT REQUIRED TO ESTABLISH A DETAILED AND COMPLETE INVENTORY OF ALL HAZARDS, SYSTEMATICALLY EVALUATE ALL RISKS WITH A CALCULATION METHOD OF SOME SORT AND PRIORITIZE THEM ALL ???

I’m wondering how efficient would it be for an industrial site (a plant) to establish such an inventory ?
Realistically, by the time this is done (several months, years(?)), wouldn’t that end up being a long list, most likely to constantly be outdated and incredibly unefficient; a heavy burden to manage, with no (or very few) added-value in itself.

Could a combination of various evaluations and activities (and taking inititatives to address main issues) be enough, such as :
- analysis of leading (near misses) & lagging indicators (incidents & accidents);
- prejob risk assessment;
-(establish site but also departments objectives);
-…
To first identify minor vs major risks (ASSESS) with some well known risk factors (electricity, heights, confined spaces, mobile equipment, moving parts…) and only follow-up (EVALUATE) on major ones? Or am I not properly understanding the definition of ‘Assess’ ?

The idea of course being to decentralize and make people at all levels accountable and ensure that maintaining the OHSMSystem will not only be the business of one or two, but definintely everybody’s role.

WHAT WOULD BE ENOUGH Risk assessment wise?

I’d like to get opinions on that matter.
Thanks.

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:23:10 +0000

I surely hope this is the case. Why otherwise would we want to ensure that Processes are controlled to reduce the potential for non conforming product and a potential disatisfied customer?

Henry

By: Waqas

Waqas — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:36:38 +0000

HI,

I m being doing risk assessments under ohs-18001 system and the method of calculating risk is L(likelihood) mulitply (A,Assets+Health,H). My question is now considering the new standard 18001:2007 thats cancle out property (assets) which equation is best to calculate the risk.

Please respond, thanks