On 27th January 2018 the ISO announced that “the FDIS ballot achieved 62 votes of approval, 4 votes of disapproval and 9 abstentions, so is now approved for publication as an International Standard”.
We have therefore waited with great anticipation for the new ISO/FDIS 45001 Standard to be released and anticipate that this will happen at some point in the next month. The new Standard has met the requirements of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1, clause 2.7.3 and the publication process was estimated to take 2 to 3 weeks to complete.
However, it appears that there have been a number of delays, which can often be the case with the publication of a new ISO Standard, due to external influences, such as the designation of the ISBN number.
The new ISO 45001 Standard is expected to adopt the familiar Annex SL structure used by other popular ISO Standards today, such as ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015. So, for organisations already certified to these Standards, system integration will be significantly easier and many of the new ISO 45001 requirements more familiar.
ISO 45001 is set to replace the existing OHSAS 18001 Standard, which has been widely adopted over the years and migration requirements are being drawn up to help certified organisations prepare. As with other new Standards, we expect that there will be a three-year migration period from the publication of ISO 45001 for organisations to transition over from the OHSAS 18001 Standard.
To find out more about the new Standard or how QMS can help you become certified, please contact 0333 344 3646 or email [email protected].