Posted By Dominic Howkins Hi Robert, I have forwarded you some infomation directly Please feel free to contact me if you need any further infomation.

Posted By IanS I've sent details direct for a web based system we use, maintained and updated by Cardinal Environmental. Worth looking at at least. Feel free to conatct me if I can assist any more.

Posted By Robert K Lewis Lists of legislation alone do not comply with this clause of the standard. How do you demonstrate compliance? - ie how does your organisation check, monitor, record, define what it does to meet the legislation that applies to its activities. The clause thus has a procedural requirement involved not a simple establishing of constraints. Thus site inspection/audit systems, archive systems, analysis of regulatory impact and responses and corrective measures etc all contribute to the pot. Bob

Posted By Ian Futcher I disagree with Baggie The UK ENHESA module has 10 sections covering water legislation, air emissions, duty of care for waste production, packaging regulations, occupational health and working time (to name but a few) as well as the 400 odd pieces of legislation dealing with safety and associated issued (eg obscure pieces of radiation legislation which may be relevant). The module provides tools to audit all these aspects with grades of non-compliance/ease and speed of getting into compliance so that the work can be properly prioritised. If you have the time to produce some 4000 pages of notes, guidance for the auditors about the application of the legislation, audit reports and scoring/prioritisation, and be sure you have covered everything you need to, then you are a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Ian

Posted By Ian Futcher Well actually, it's talking about legal compliance, and OHSAS 18000 is not a legally enforcible system... or have I missed a significant change in the legislation? Ian

Posted By colebeck I think things have got a little confused in this thread. 18001 has two key clauses here: 4.3.2 which is about identifying and understanding applicable OH&S legal and other requirements; and 4.5.2 which is about evaluating compliance with those requirements. The former should be bread and butter to an OH&S professional since it is a key part of the job whether you are implementing a management system or not. You could subscribe to all manner of services [Croner, Barbour etc] but you'd still need to understand how the regulations etc actually apply to your business. The latter should be part of the day job too really, since it is about have processes to review whether or not your organisation is actually meeting its legal obligations. The approach of audits/inspections etc as data gathering tools, collating the evidence and applying judgement on actual business compliance, implementing corrective actions if necessary and reporting compliance status to senior management should do the trick!. As for 18001 versus HSG65, one should be the other. Both ask basically the same things: identify your hazards, assess the risk, implement controls and/or improvement programmes, check effectiveness of the those controls and improvements and repeat... there is no conflict there at all, but 18001 probably wins out as a business framework since it parallels 9001 and 14001 and will therefore mean more in an MD's mind!

Posted By Robert K Lewis Colebeck Totally agree - this clause is one of the most poorly understood and managed of the whole of the standard. Far too often people think if I have a amanagement system and have identified the relevant legal and other requirements applicable to my organisation then job done. I automatically am compliant with legislation. Far from the truth - I repeat - How do you prove you are comlpliant Bob

Posted By colebeck I think we all recognise that neither 18001 or HSG65 are the law - and are not legally enforceable by anyone. They are both specifications for operating management systems within an organisation to try to keep people safe and healthy during their working day. The point I was making was that OH&S professionals should be capable of delivering something that explains their organisation's legal obligations. the other point 18001 requires is the evaluation of compliance with those obligations - that is, put something into place to periodically review whether or not the company's systems are actually delivering anything like compliance with the law. BTW, on the radiation regs: what if they operate an X-ray parcel/letter scanner? :-)

Posted By Robert Hayes Folks, thank you all for your public and private responses to my posting. Greatly appreciated!