Proposed ISO 45001 Standard Moving Forward

The buzz continues to build around ISO 45001, the proposed international standard for occupational health and safety management systems. The ISO PC283 Committee recently agreed to move the standard to the next stage--as a DIS (draft international standard). This means the standard has now surmounted a major standards development step and will continue to advance. Once the DIS is submitted to the ISO Secretariat, it will be circulated to all ISO members, who get three months to vote and comment on it. From here it can either go straight to publication or go to the final draft international standard stage.

ASSE's latest Tech Brief notes that the U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) submitted its vote, “no with comments,” to ISO via ANSI, which is the voting organization for the U.S. at ISO. "The TAG ratified the ongoing American position of supporting the project and wanting to see the standard move forward. . . . The TAG did not want to see the current draft move to a finalization process since the consensus is that additional work still needs to take place." ISO has also posted a briefing note on the standard.

Overall, U.S. TAG members agree that this project presents a "real opportunity for standards to play an important role in addressing compelling global occupational safety and health issues. This new standard can help us create a necessary global foundation of worker safety standards and inspections that can be used by all global supply chains, for all industries, and cover all contractors and subcontractors in all countries supplying products into these supply chains."

For technical information about this standards project or for more information about membership on the TAG, contact ASSE's Tim Fisher.