LRQA sees major progress in ISO Standards Revisions; ISO 45001 (Health & Safety) PC 283 meeting outputs and ISO 14001 (Environmental) CD2 published
(PRWEB UK) 30 October 2013 -- The past week has seen two significant developments in relation to the on-going ISO Standards Revision process and LRQA’s Deputy Technical Director Steve Williams, played a key role in both of these.
Firstly, the meeting of ISO Meeting PC 283 concluded at the end of last week in London. ISO Project Committee (PC) 283 Working Group 1 (WG1) has been established as a result of the positive vote on the new work proposal for the development of an ISO standard (to be known as ISO 45001) built upon OHSAS 18001 - the internationally-recognised and adopted British Standard for Occupational Health and Safety.
The meeting took place in London between 21-25 October and involved 50 organisations. One of the key outputs from PC 283 is agreement on the upcoming publication to the Working Group of the first Working Draft of the new ISO 45001 on Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) Management System Requirements.
Steve Williams attended PC 283 as a representative of IIOC, whose Chairman is Mike James, Managing Director LRQA. “One of the key points to emerge was a resolution from the committee to go to the ISO TMB to extend the scope of the Project Committee to include the development of guidance for incorporation into the document in a similar way to the process that was undertaken for international environmental standard ISO 14001 and Annex A,” explained Williams. “Our technical work in the development of standards is carried out under the overall management of the Technical Management Board (TMB). The Technical Management Board reports to the ISO Council and its role is defined in the statutes of the organisation.”
Specifically, the TMB is responsible for tasks such as setting up the various technical committees (TC), appointing TC chairs and monitoring the progress of the technical work. It is also responsible for the Directives, which are essentially the rules for the development of International Standards, and it deals with all matters of strategic planning, coordination, performance and monitoring of technical committee activities.
Williams also confirmed that “an outline project plan has been produced for the document based on a three-year development period, which will aim for the first Committee Draft (CD) to be published by May 2014, the Draft International Standard (DIS) to be published in February 2015, the Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) to be published March 2016 and publication of the full standard in Sept-Oct 2016.”
Clearly these dates are very provisional at this time and are very dependent upon the work being completed on each of the phases in accordance with the plan. “What is likely is that once the DIS is produced there will be a resolution put to ISO/CASCO to produce an ISO 17021 (the standard that governs certification bodies) series standard on OHS audit competence,” concluded Williams. The ISO/CASCO Committee is the technical committee focused on conformity assessment. Its scope includes:
• To study means of assessing the conformity of products, processes, services and management systems to appropriate standards or other technical specifications.
• To prepare international guides and International Standards relating to the practice of testing, inspection and certification of products, processes and services, and to the assessment of management systems, testing laboratories, inspection bodies, certification bodies, accreditation bodies and their operation and acceptance.
• To promote mutual recognition and acceptance of national and regional conformity assessment systems, and the appropriate use of International Standards for testing, inspection, certification, assessment and related purposes.
What is clear though is that the work on ISO 45001 will follow the requirements of Annex SL (common text and structure) so as to align this new standard with ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 14001 (environmental) – both of which are going through the revision process. The next PC 283 WG1 meeting will take place 24-28 March 2014.
Secondly, Wednesday, 23rd October saw the issuance of Committee Draft 2 (CD2) for ISO 14001, which has now entered a three-month balloting period; more on this process can be read here. Steve Williams is a member of the ISO 14001 Working Group (TC 207/SC1 WG5), again representing the IIOC.
Further information about the ISO Standard Revisions is available at http://www.lrqa.com/isostandardsupdate.
Philippa Weare, Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance, http://www.lrqa.com, +44 2476882386, [email protected]
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