Posted By Ian Waldram Have you read the IOSH Policy on this, if not it's a good start on the pro's and cons? Another useful reference is John Rimminton's survey on contractor management for HSE titled "Managing Risk Adding Value". My observation on his results is that clearly those organisations working in global markets tend to use an integrated, quality-based management system. In my personal experience in the offshore hydrocarbon industry, integration worked well. However we didn't in fact have a formal in-house quality system (the industry has almost no external customers, so there is no external driver), we merely tried to work to quality principles. We did have one go at a fully-integrated business management system, and soon gave up at the magnitude of the task facing us to try to get every single part of the organisation moving its business processes to a quality-based approach - that's mainly a comment on how far the organisation was from this, than the validity of the vision! All the above is in the context of systems which are NOT externally verified - I have no personal experience of that aspect, though plenty others in the industry do have.