ISO OHSAS 18001 Certification is known as health safety certification. OHSAS stands for Occupational Health & Safety Assessment Series. It is also used as OH&S Standard. This standard is divided into two parts: one is 18001 and another is 18002.
18001 specifies the requirements for OH&S and 18002 provides guidance for establishing, implementing or improving a management system which is based on OHSAS 18001 and demonstrating successful implementation of OHSAS 18001. It does not specify the specific criteria but it facilitates the management on health risk related to the business of the organization.
It is a great frustration to me that a huge number of workers life is in great threat due to factory owner’s negligence of workers health. Air pollution, excessive heat inside the factory, sound pollution all are in very critical condition inside the factory. I feel very bad when I see this condition which is very harmful for workers.
Most of the factory owners think about profit and profit but they do not understand that without good health of his workers it is not possible stay in the profit market in long term. Today who is working in dangerous working environment after five years he may be attacked by lung cancer or any other death threatening diseases, then the company will lose this skilled worker.
There is a social responsibility to your workers. As a top management you should think about your labor’s health. You should provide risk free working environment for your workers. Today only one earned man family can be destroyed tomorrow due to his health risk which is created by yourself. So, you should care about this issue seriously.
Your negligence can bring death of labors or it can be cause of dangerous accident in workers life. A worker may be disable for life. As a result his family can be destroyed too. As a human being you should not expect this.
To protect or minimize this kind of serious illness or accident there is a great standard that is called OHSAS 18001 Standard. This is an excellent guideline to protect your workers health, illness or dangerous accident. It can save your worker’s life and help you too to stay in your business.
OHSAS Standard is based on four major stages: Policy, Planning, implementation and operation, checking,
OHSAS Certificaion
corrective action and finally management review. Though there are four clauses in the standard but only clause number 4 is focused to provide all requirements to implement ohs activities.
General requirements, OH& S Policy, Planning, Implementation and Operation, Checking and management are the major portions of Clause 4 of OHSAS Standard. However these major portions are also divided into sub portions like 4.4.1. and a,b, c etc.
Why will you adopt OHSAS?
There are many benefits of OHSAS certification. Some are described in below:
- It provides the structure for OH& S Policy
- It helps to establish and maintain commitment towards OH&S
- It creates roles and responsibilities under a defined structure of the organization.
- Helpful for Continual development
- Increases trust and communication between owners, employee and buyers
- Reduces incident
- It saves cost in production
- It helps to grow business performance
- Improves company’s image
- Improves emergency preparedness.
- Increases social awarness
OHSAS follows the world’s most popular theory for quality development and it is PDCA Circle.
OHSAS Certification process; Certification process of ohsas is as same as other standards like 9001 and ISO 14001. After completion documentation process, you will have to implement those requirements of ohsas. After implementation you will have to perform internal audit and management review meeting.
Pre-audit, stage 1 and stage 2 audits are performed before obtaining ohsas certificate. Ohsas certificate is issued for three years and at least one SR audit should be performed to proper maintaining of the health safety certificate in a year. After three years you can participate in RC audit for another three years extension.
What company will do according to the ohsas certification?
According to the clause no 4.2(b) the company will make a commitment to prevention of injury and ill health and continual improvements and with other requirements to wich the organization subscribes that relate to its OH&S hazards.
According to the clause 4.3.1 the company will establish, implement and maintain a procedure(s) for the ongoing hazard identification, risk assessment and determination of necessary control.
According to the clause 4.4.7(a) The organization shall establish, implement and maintain a procedure(s) to identify the potential for emergency situation.
Like above many more important guidelines are found in this standard. If you are a company owner and if you are the social person then it is a really great guideline for your company to provide security of your staffs who are the wheel of your production and source of revenue.
OHSAS Certification Cost
OHSAS Certification cost is not so high. It varies on certification body’s policy. There are few certification bodies who provide ohsas certificate in Bangladesh. However, if you are looking for spend less money in OHSAS 18001 Certification then, you can contact with a low cost ohsas certficate provider in Bangladesh here.