Posted By Martin Taylor
Just seem some advertising blurb from BSI for this - what is it - is it OSHAS 18001 in a different format - where are with an ISO standard for Health and Safety accreditation?

martin

Posted By Jay Joshi
BS 18004:2008;"Guide to achieving effective occupational health and safety performance" supersedes BS 8800:2004 "Guide to Occupational health and safety management systems"


http://www.bsigroup.com/.../?pid=000000000030166684

Posted By SteveD-M
DKP

Not my usual area but where did you see that you had to change over by may?

Posted By DPK
Steve

I have just checked my emails here at this office and not found the info, i will need to check again at my other office because i do remember reading it in the past week.

Maybe Jay Josi can help as he has posted a pretty comprehensive reply to the 1st post.

DPK

Posted By Pete Chidwick
Jay

You seem well informed. Could you please throw a bit of light on what this actually means?

"BS 18004 applies to any organization that wishes to:

Assure itself of its conformity with its stated OH&S policy and with BS OHSAS 18001 by:

1. Making a self-determination and self-declaration, or

2. Seeking confirmation of its conformity by parties having an interest in the organization, such as customers, or

3. Seeking confirmation of its self-declaration by a party external to the organization, or

4. Seeking certification/registration of its OH&S management system by an external organization"

This is a serious question - I'm genuinely struggling and not ashamed to admit it! Thanks.

Pete

Posted By Jay Joshi
What is BS 18004:2008?

BS 18004:2008 has been prepared by technical Committee HS/1, Occupational health and safety management.

Its relationship with other documents is that:-

BS 18004:2008 supersedes BS 8800:2004, which is now withdrawn.

BS 8800:2004 was

BS 18004 is one of three related documents on occupational health and safety management systems published by the BSI since June 2007.

The first was BS OHSAS 18001:2007, which specifies what an organization needs to have in place to meet the criteria for occupational health and safety management in order to meet the requirements for certification. It superseded OHSAS 18001:1999

BS OHSAS 18001 is supported by BS OHSAS 18002:2008, which gives guidance on what an organization should consider when implementing and operating a system that meets the requirements of BS OHSAS 18001. It supersedes OHSAS 18002:2000

BS 18004:2008 gives good practice guidance on successful health and safety management, and builds on the guidance advocated in HSG 65. Structured around the OHSAS 18001 framework, it provides guidance in line with developments in OHS management within the UK and provides extensive annexes intended to support those organizations that wish to deliver good health and safety performance.

BS 18004 takes the form of guidance and recommendations. it should not be quoted as if it were a specification and particular care should be taken to ensure that claims of compliance are not misleading. any user claiming compliance with BS 18004 is expected to be able to justify any course of action that deviates from its recommendations.



We have ended with this situation because of the "history" and lack of consensus in the BSI Technical committee HS/1 when the first "British Standard" for Occupational Health and Safety Management was published as BS 8800 in 1996. To cut a long story short, BS 8800:1996 was confusing to some as it had 2 paths, one following the ISO 14001 route and the other HS(G)65. This occurred because ISO 14001 was just being published at that time. It also did not lend itself to be used by certification bodies for certification ( i.e it was not auditable!).

Therefore, the certification bodies together with BSI published OHSAS 18001:1999 in 1999 followed by OHSAS 18002:2000 in 2000. They could not call it a standard because to be a standard, it has to be supported by the Technical Committee HS/1 which was not the case.


Then there was a revision of BS 8800 in 2003/4, which culminated in dropping the ISO 14001 route and aligning it more with HS(G)65 and ILO-OHS 2001. This was possible because there was OHSAS 18001 & 18002 for those who wanted to go for certification or aligning with ISO 14001.


The practical reality was that OHSAS 18001 has become a defacto international standard. This was despite not being an ISO standard.

BERR (previously DTI) only recently included OHSAS 18001 as one that could be accredited fairly recently in its MoU with UKAS.

I presume that this led to a rethink by BSI's HS/1 committee and acceptance that it makes sense to have all Occupational Health and Safety Management Standards in the same series--which 18001 & 18002 were, the odd one being BS 8800:2004. Therefore BS 8800:2004 when revised has become BS 18004:2008!

There is also an international dimension in that within ISO, BSI proposals to commence work on an international standard for an Occupational Health and Safety Management System failed twice, in 1997 and around 2000.

There is currently no internationally accepted ISO standard on occupational health and safety and there is an ongoing assessment about whether ISO standards on guidance and/or a specification should be developed. In the absence of any developments at ISO level, BSI published a guidance document BS 8800:1996 (subsequently revised as BS 8800:2004) and in 1998, the OHSAS project group was established.

The original objectives of this group were to promote the publication by ISO of an OH&S management system standard specification and requirements standard and to develop a specification.

A specification, OHSAS 18001:1999, was issued in 1999 and this was supported two years later by a corresponding guidance document, OHSAS 18002.

Despite the lack of a formal ISO standard, adoption of OHSAS 18001 has been widespread, a fact supported by a number of surveys undertaken for the OHSAS project group. The work of the project group continues, resulting in the recent publication of the revised document OHSAS 18001:2007.