Some organisations have poor or mediocre H&S regimes and it is a "no brainer" (to those of us within our profession) that they should be seeking to improve their H&S performance. Those organisations that are inclined to seek the 18001 badge will usually be "better" at keeping their activities safe and healthy and may even be very good or excellent at it. Why do they need to continually improve? I am now retiring to take cover from incoming although will be observing with interest!

David It appears at first to be an obvious answer - without the desire to improve there will be a lack of motivation and as Bob has pointed out, staying still is in fact moving backwards. However, what concerns me with this ethos is all manner of supercilious initiatives in the name of continuous, or is it continuing, improvement. I would also add that 18001 accreditation per se is no guarantee of improved performance. Indeed, given the time and cost maintaining it I can see few tangible benefits. Ray

I find that 18001 is a sophisticated management system which takes considerable resource to maintain. Of course there is an advantage in that the system is audited by an external body (for transparency), but in reality a management system that aligns itself with HSG65 can do everything that 18001 can do, because in my opinion, 'better' organisations would want to continually improve anyway.

On the 1800 point, I know of at least one major corporate client (household name) who do not have 18001 and until recently 14001 for that matter. Strange thing really, when to get on their approved contractor list you need to jump through all sorts of hoops. Now what does that say about the accreditation?

We hold both ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 mainly because our customers expect to see this so in order to get business we comply. However, as for continuing improvement, it is safe to say that the law changes regularly and new initiatives and technology come on to the market. Keeping up with these changes can be classed continuing improvement on it's own. By the time you have trained your workforce on the changes, introduced new technology and completed training and risk assessments on this and upgraded your procedures and standard work, you have demonstrated continuing improvement.

It's important to remember that improvement can be both to 'results' (effectiveness of the OHS management system), and to the resources required to obtain those results (efficiency of the OHS-MS). As results improve, it becomes progressively harder to continually improve them - mainly because in H&S we measure 'good performance' negatively, i.e. lack of injury/ illness/damage. But improved efficiency is always possible, i.e. same results with less resources/effort. All this is in addition to responding to new information, legislative change, changes in published standards, etc. as highlighted by other above.

Safety aside, its good business to have accredations such as 18001. As part of the accredatation you do need to prove you are improving as it were. I work for a large global company having acredations such as 18001/ 14001 etc definately give you a slight upper hand when tenring for new business.

quote=David Bannister]Some organisations have poor or mediocre H&S regimes and it is a "no brainer" (to those of us within our profession) that they should be seeking to improve their H&S performance. Those organisations that are inclined to seek the 18001 badge will usually be "better" at keeping their activities safe and healthy and may even be very good or excellent at it. Why do they need to continually improve? I am now retiring to take cover from incoming although will be observing with interest!

Pete Of course, you are right. Our world is continuously changing and we need to ensure that we change with it. The danger with standards is that in my experience they tend to establish a status quo and do not always ensure that the organisation keeps evolving. I try to spend at least half a day, preferably more, each month trawling through the relevant scientific journals relevant to my special interest to ensure that I am aware of any developments that can influence how I approach my work. This is in addition to monitoring other developments (polarised light spectroscopy is just one) that can have significant bearing on my ability to provide effective support to clients. It is surprising how often I need to 'fine tune' what I know to ensure that it reflects new information. I take the view that the world is moving forward. Standing still means in effect that the world is passing us by, i.e. we are actually moving backward in relative terms. Chris

Chris, I see the issue is with the accreditation side of this area rather than the standard itself. Once you have a need to assess on a 3rd party basis then those assessors will need, or will develop, a model in their approaches. This inevitably results in assessors getting involved in directing internal objectives. If we think about it we dont seek accreditaton to other BS standards and I believe that attaching accreditatkon to these management standards has led to, as you say, a limitation and resource demand that doesn't work for many organisations. But hey that is just my experience, no doubt others have understood how to use them effectively.I doubt that any organisation who does it with the sole objective of getting on the list will ever get the point of continual improvement p48

quote=David Bannister]However, expecting well-managed organisations to continually come up with bright ideas purely to satisfy an artificially imposed set of rules seems counter productive, wasteful and possibly one of the reasons why H&S is perceived in some quarters as self-serving and run by jobsworths. Takes further and deeper cover.

Bobblewis I thought that your last sentence is something that I know as 'risk assessment'! Chris

We don’t have 18001 but we have embraced continuous improvement, that is the idea that you can always find some room for improvement taking into account better technology, a bit more money being available or lessons learned after incidents/near misses. I would be very concerned if an organisation stated that their H&S system and situation is perfect and that there is not room for improvement. The key to this as Pete48 says is evolution. All too often an organisation acts in complacent manner and when something goes wrong then the demand is for rapid wholesale change. This is very exciting but too often it leads if inappropriate hurried decisions. By acting slowly and proportionately, doing it a bit at a time you are more likely to get the sort of result that you want. I have just been reviewing the audits from our dispatch area for the past 10 years. Back then it was just a shed with a bench for packing stuff, a pile packaging material and a load of disgruntled staff. After our last audit I am pleased to see that the area has now been completely reorganised with proper rolling tables and neatly stacked packaging materials, which are safety accessible. Manual handling is far better and all staff are properly trained and to be honest much happier. As well as being safer this is now much more efficient and they are handling at least 3 times the volume of work with the same number of staff. This did not happen overnight, it took a lot of planning, arguing and some money to get right. That’s what I would call genuine continuous improvement.

AK, for clarity I saw your post after I posted. I agree with everything you have said. p48