New OHSAS upgrade within Work Environment Management Systems

LRQA is the first certification body to be OHSAS accredited by the British accreditation authority UKAS, 2007.

Employees and interested parties within various industries have for a long time exerted pressure at management level around the world to stress the importance of the work environment in the workplace. We can see significant differences in a safe workplace, not only within directly exposed industries such as construction and civil engineering, the engineering industry or road transport, but also within the service sector.

Social responsibility is a good investment for companies. A major commitment to health and safety issues by a management team motivates personnel, which in turn increases productivity. Greater commitment and focus on the work environment visibly reduces accidents and absences due to injuries and illness, which also helps to reduce direct and indirect costs.

Early lobbying during the 1990s led to a project group publishing the first internationally recognised standard for the work environment OHSAS or Specification on Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series: OHSAS 18001:1999 in 1999.

As with all standards, this one also required updating. During 2006, a project group revised OHSAS 18001:1999. A new OHSAS 18001:2007 standard was published in 2007.

The new standard OHSAS 18001:2007 is better suited to the structures contained in ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001.2004. This means that it is now easier to integrate these management systems and that work to maintain a high level of focus on the work environment has been simplified. OHSAS 18001:2007 also focuses more on results that previously.

LRQA can, with advantage, carry out integrated audits (quality – the environment – health & safety – food) of your management system, which results in efficient, cost-saving audits.