Posted By John Murphy Agnes, Could you expand/clarify the last paragraph. As I read it you are suggessting that the OHSAS Auditer does not know what legal standards they are looking for.

Posted By Agnes Chow I have two requests from two parties, one is from the external accreditation body and another one is from the internal auditors who are my fellow colleagues. For the external auditors, they asked me to show them the evidence to prove that my company was compiled with all the "applicable legislation". That is not only the H&S Ordinance and Regulation exist here, but also other legislation such as Boiler and Pressure Ordinance, Electricity Ordinance, Water Polluation Control Ordinance, etc. which generally applied to all organisations. That means my workload will be increased to a certain extent. Also I find it vague to present this kind of "evidence", can I argue that as long as the company has never been charged against breaching any legislation, we are proved fully compilance? The second request for me is from my internal auditors. They are my colleagues and they have received a two day internal auditing skills training. They said that they would need to be more knowledgable about the legislation before they could conduct the audits effectively. They asked for information or training specifically such as how many Lux is for a good lighting in a workplace, or how many fire extinguishers for a 500 square foot office, etc. I have explained to them that there is no specific description in the legislation regarding this, but there are recommendations. However, how can I coach or training the internal auditors all the knowledge on H&S? They migth need a Diploma course to fulfil this! Any thoughts or ideas to handle the above mentioned requests are very much appreciated. Thanks.

Posted By Robert K Lewis Agnes I think that the auditor is looking for a number of key items a) A table of the legislation applicable to your operations and including to what parts b) Evidence that the legislation and guidance has been made available to the staff and they know how to use it. This involves document control and training records. c)Evidence, eg subscriptions to information systems etc to provide up to date information on legislation and ACOP changes etc. Remember the model is the same as ISO 14001 and the ideas are fairly readily transferrable from there. You have not indicated your background but you need to have a solid ground in ISO 9001 2000 and ISO 14001 1996 before you can really get to grips with OHSAS and I have known quite large organisations fail!! Bob

Posted By Agnes Chow Thanks for all the inputs. They help narrow down my situation. I am the H&S Manager of the company and also the only one in the company who has formal H&S training. I am at the point of finishing my MSc paper in H&S (a long distance course by University of Portsmouth). I wrote the H&S manuals for the company which are correspondent to the legislation requirements. I think my problem is not at the point of whether or not I can help the company to meet all the H&S legal requirements, which is pretty straight forward to follow. The point is that I was asked about the compliance on other "applicable legislation"(i.e. non H&S legislation) as well which I did not include in the very beginning of the management systems. I did identify all the H&S laws here and communicate with the employees. Perhaps the inadequacy of my system is that part of the other "applicable legislation". However how can we define "applicable legislation" exactly? With regard to the arrangement of internal audit, I am the only one in the company who have H&S training. If we need internal auditors to be H&S educated, it might not be realistic and cost effective. I believe most of the company will not hire H&S personnel more than enough to run the system. And if I am the one who wrote the policy and procedures, it is difficult to do the audits as well because of bias, subjectivity, etc.. I guess what I can do is to ensure that all the legal requirements are included in all the H&S Manuals. And the internal auditors can audit with reference to the manuals.... But it is still unfair for them, say for a layman to audit the machine guarding, welding procedures, whether the lighting is adequate or not, etc. perhaps the internal auditors do need some basic H&S knowledge....? Anyway, I am enlightened by all of you and once again I find this forum so excellent and it is professional and helpful. If you do not believe, go to have a look at the industrialhygiene.com forum of the US. Have a good day.