New OHS – ISO Standard is Finally Approved & An Update to IATF 16949

The Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) for ISO 45001, formerly OHSAS 18001, has been approved. It is time to start planning on implementing ISO 45001 if you are already OHSAS 18001 certified. Additionally, in October 2017, the IATF published Sanctioned Interpretations 1-9 for IATF 16949. These interpretations were based on common misunderstandings of of IATF 16949 leading to non-conformances.

Update on ISO 45001

The ISO 45001 FDIS was released in November 2017 and achieved approval as the new ISO Occupational Health & Safety Management System Standard in January 2018. The US TAG had overwhelmingly voted in favor of the DIS2 when they met in September 2017. Many European members of ISO/PC 283 had a few more issues and some were philosophically against the standard in the first place.

If you recall the history of the ISO 45001 or OHSAS 18001, it was voted down twice by the ISO body. This effort to make it a DIS and an FDIS was also fraught with issues. For those of you who attended Omnex’s webinar “Update to Status of New Standards,” you may recall that the ILO had a turf war with ISO over who is responsible for Health and Safety standards. It is now good to know that these issues are behind us. The DIS was then voted down and the DIS2 took some time to make it out of committees. The DIS2 meetings in the US TAG in September were thorough and very democratic. Multiple key issues were boiled down to three show stoppers which we covered in our webinar “ISO 45001 (Former OHSAS 18001) Released as a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS),” write us for access to the recording at webinars@omnex.com

Not only was the DIS2 for ISO 45001 voted on quite positively by the ISO/PC TAG 283, but the FDIS was also accepted with a large majority. After the DIS2 was accepted, there were only two options for the FDIS, you either accept it as is or you vote it down. The US TAG accepted it as is with editorial comments. There is a general feeling that this is a good standard and will help organizations implement and transition from the OHSAS 18001 to ISO 45001. It is also felt that due to the high level structure, the standard will attract many new entrants. The ISO 45001 standard is expected to become an International Standard in March 2018.

It is time to start planning on implementing ISO 45001 if you are already OHSAS 18001 certified. If you are ISO 9001 certified or have implemented a derivative standard like AS9100, IATF 16949, and/or ISO 14001, write Omnex to find out why ISO 45001 may be the standard for you.

Update on IATF 16949

The transition to IATF 16949 was reported in September 2017 as 5% completed. The Ford IATF members commented that as per their calculations, there were just enough resources for IATF 16949 if all went well.

There are an average of 5.44 nonconformances and .78 majors found in each audit. Registrars do not seem to be shy about giving multiple majors to organizations that they feel are not deserving of IATF 16949. Omnex has performed several gap analyses for some of these organizations that have failed their initial IATF 16949 audits.

In October 2017, the IATF published Sanctioned Interpretations 1-9 for IATF 16949. These interpretations were based on common misunderstandings of suppliers that resulting in minor or even major nonconformities. One of the key areas is Customer Specific Requirements.

All Omnex customers who we have helped either via training or implementation are getting certified. Not only are we working with many customers who are systematically working on getting certified, we are also working with a few who have failed their initial IATF transition audit and approached Omnex for help and support.

Please contact Omnex