You are the Lead Auditor for an ISO 45001 Certification Audit. While you were auditing the HSE Department, the HSE Manager was called on radio that there is an emergency and you went with him and met the incident, that the unbalanced material collapsed on the worker while offloading using fork lift..

• How will you audit their emergency response and lifting processes?
• Which other processes will you audit and what question will you ask?
• What will you be looking out for?
• Overall, what does this say about the organization's OH&S Management System?

ISO 45001 is about the companies management systems not particualraly any unfolding incident.

Unless you specifically set aside several days for the audit it is unlikely you will, at this visit, get the whole documented picture for this incident.

As the auditor you are not there to conduct or participate in an accident investigation (I seriously doubt anyone has an accident/incident procedure stating an auditor must be present).

Your focus should be on the company procedures looking at recruitment, induction, training, safe operating procedures, accident recording / investigation and management review amongst others.

What you can do is make a note of this incident and at a future audit use it as the thread to follow if what has been recorded reflects what is documented within the flow of the company procedures.

One incident is insufficient evidence from which to draw a conclusion as it is the details that will come from the investigation and subsequent review that will be the demonstration of the effectiveness of the system.

Kate, I was wondering something similar, though also a bit puzzled as to why an ISO auditor would want to home in on the HSE "Department", as that isn't usually where the compliance happens or not UNLESS an organisation's systems put everything on the Safety Bods to do.

Yes, Kate.

Been there! Quite common for the 45001 person to start with the H&S person as a point of contact, and to discuss where the audit will focus.

But that's not the same as "auditing" the "Health and Safety Department" but rather using the H&S people as a conduit to home in on whatever areas the auditor wants to look at in more detail.

Have had the auditor explaining to me that they have found a few problems for our H&S team to deal with and for me to then point out that our systems were such that the problems were for line managers to resolve UNLESS they were high level issues with the systems themselves.

Originally Posted by: Acorns

Attending an active incident as an outsider / observer is more likely to hinder rather than help the situation, intentionally or otherwise.  

Absolutely.  If I had an auditor in for a scheduled visit and there was a significant accident and the auditor decided that was a good opportunity to get involved or audit accident response procedures I'm fairly confident I would be asking them to leave the premises.  They can look at the paperwork arising next time they visit, if they want, but they don't get to stick their nose in at ground zero.

Auditors are not omnipotent or infallible.  It is good to remind them of that occasionally.