Last Steps to Perform Before the OHSAS 18001 Certification Audit

OHSAS 18001 is applicable to any organization – irrespective of their size or geographical location. OHSAS 18001 certification Singapore is an essential requirement for organizations in Singapore. There is a lot of procedure to implement an Occupational Health & Safety Management System (OH&SMS) using the requirements of OHSAS 18001 certification, but just getting it running is not the end. Along with maintaining and enhancing your management system, you may have chosen to have an OHSAS 18001 certification audit performed by an external body; and, if so, you want to do what you can do to the last steps of passing this audit and attaining certification.

Implementing the OH&SMS for successful certification preparing for an OH&SMS certification audit hasn’t changed much from OHSAS 18001 to DIS/ISO 45001. In many cases, as with any management system, the beginning step is to make sure that you have addressed all the fundamentals in the requirements standard within your system:

•    Through Understanding the scope of your OH&SMS?

•    The OH&S policy to clearly identify the overall intention and direction of the company’s OH&SMS?

•    The OH&S objectives to work toward enhancement

•    Understanding your OH&S legal requirements and keeping up to date with legislation changes?

•    Have your OH&S hazards been recognized and the associated risks measured?

Although the processes of internal audit, corrective action, and management review are required as part of implementing the OH&SMS, they are critical to understanding if your management system is working. These are the procedures used to confirm that the system’s processes meet the set arrangements, identify and repair problems, and correctly review and assign resources where they are needed. All of this is significant when preparing for your certification audit.

Here are some things to consider with these processes as you prepare for your certification body to come for their audit:

Internal Audits: This is the key approach that your firm checks that the processes within your OH&SMS are meeting the arrangements that you had planned for them too .Before your certification audit your certification body will anticipate that you will have performed at least one complete cycle of audits; auditing every process in your OH&SMS at least once. Knowing that procedures are meeting expectations is the best way to prepare for your certification.

Corrective Action: Of course, you would hope to find everything meeting expectations during your internal audits, but this is not always the case. When you do find a challenge, either through internal audit or other means, appropriately documenting how you address these problems is crucial.

Improvement Processes: One of the key enhancement processes within your OH&SMS is the use of the OH&S objectives. These goals are the most important improvements that you have identified to improve the OH&S of your firm, so knowing how they are progressing is vital. The last thing that is of great importance to the certification auditors is your use of management review.