Does complying with OHSAS 18001, provide compliance with national Health and Safety legislations?

Full compliance with OHSAS 18001 will ensure the compliance of International  safety standards and it will surely provide compliance with local health and safety legislation.

18001 is the internationally recognised standard enabling businesses to measure and demonstrate their commitment to occupational safety and health.  This is a good way forward.  It has positive benefits as well as reassurance including:

• Confidence  that you proactively manage Health and Safety
• Confidence that you exercise due diligence
• You have a system that ensures you plan, implement, assess and review your H&S systems regularly and maintain continuous improvement
• You have systems and procedures that identify, reduce , mitigate and control health and safety concerns within the business
• Systems can be integrated with compliance to other standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001.
• People within your company have clear communication about the part they play in the development of their company safety.

I fully agree with the answers been added by EXPERTS..............Thanks.

All I know is OHSAS 18001 requirements are more advance rather than my country OHS legislation ...

Yes it complies, and it should ! They aim toward the same health standards !

Thank You

OHSAS 18001 is an internationally recognised standard for health and safety management.  Certification to the standard demonstrates that the organisation has considered how they will identify, manage and control health and safety risks.The standard is based on the ‘plan – do – check – act’ management process, and it has been designed to be compatible with ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards.  However, this does not mean that all three standards have to be in place to achieve certification.

Plan – Do – Check – Act (PDCA) is a management framework which provides a methodical approach to problem solving and continual improvement.  This cycle is based on the following four phases:

1. Plan – This stage requires you to identify your objectives, understand your current situation, set targets, consider tasks, timing, cost, roles and communicate it with all relevant parties
2. Do – This section deals with the implementation of your plan.  You need to focus on how you communicate, monitor and make adjustments as you go along.
3. Check – This is the review phase where you evaluate your progress against your initial objectives.  The key point it to evaluate progress by identifying what went well, and what needs to improve.  Don’t forget to let people know about this along the way!
4. Act – Now its time for action!  By this stage you should know what improvements are required to make your system successful, so you need to determine how this will happen and develop a further action plan which will form the start of the next PDCA cycle.

• OHSAS 18001 demonstrates that your organisation is legally compliant and is able to manage health and safety risks.
• Stakeholders have to prove their commitment to health and safety, resulting in a positive impact on your company’s health and safety culture.
• Certification can reduce downtime following an accident and insurance costs.
• Continual development enables your organisation to innovate and demonstrate forward thinking approaches.
• It also pushes your organisation to ensure that it has a competitive edge.
• Certification is often a requirement for organisations tendering for new work.
• Successful implementation will increase your access to new business.

External audits are carried out by accredited certification bodies such as the British Standards Institution (BSI) who have been assessed against internationally recognised standards.  Accredited bodies are independently evaluated for competence, are impartial, and are able to issue written assurance that your management system meets the requirements of the standard.  However, your organisation will also be required to carry out internal audits as part of the certification process.

Yes, and that is a part from it in terms of compliances. But it doesn't stops there. There are 2 part in executing compliances.1. Documentation evidence and Audited (Internal and External parties).2. The executing part of the OHSAS1 requirement.Why is that so? Because anyone can compiled all the data for filing purpose. But does every stakeholder committed to comply with it? Or it's just an office assistant work to filled and prepare for it, or it's just a twice yearly event. Consistency plays an important role in maintaining the Integrity of an Organisation. I've seen many of times in an organisation, compliance being done for the sake of auditing purpose. It's just an organisation culture to get certified for it, but in terms of committment it's just a paper work/chase. It'll be too lengthy for me to elaborate further. But just stating the facts and the answer varies from a perspectives.

Various elements of both the ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 standards contain direct or indirect references to ‘compliance with legislation and regulations’.

 Together these elements constitute the compliance management system. Although the ‘internal audit’ element does not explicitly refer to legislation and regulations, it is included here since the internal audit is an essential link.

There is a relationship here with the requirement from the standard to identify and evaluate environmental and/or OHS aspects.

The OHSAS 18001 standard requires the application of a risk assessment in evaluating the OHS aspects.

The ISO 14001 standard does not require this, although organizations with an integrated management system often do apply the risk assessment when identifying their environmental aspects.

: identifying and evaluating environmental aspects’ provides examples.

The outcome of the risk assessment can be used to determine how strictly to specify the evaluation of compliance with legislation and regulation for a particular environmental aspect.

An organization can establish a few basic principles for specifying how it evaluates its own compliance. This can be done using the matrix also used for the risk assessment and each organization can use its own categories for chances and effect.