Auditing the Safety Function - What tools should I use?

[EJE0622]

This may be a dumb question, but do I audit our safety program? I've been doing some research and I can't find anything about auditing a safety program, but I do find information about OHSA 18000. I am very confused about what I should be doing when it comes to ISO 9001 and safety. Someone please help me!! LOL

[Coury Ferguson]

I have changed the Thread title to better clarify the question. If this title is not to your liking, ask any of the Moderators to change it.

[GStough]

In Reply to Parent Post by EJE0622

This may be a dumb question, but do I audit our safety program? I've been doing some research and I can't find anything about auditing a safety program, but I do find information about OHSA 18000. I am very confused about what I should be doing when it comes to ISO 9001 and safety. Someone please help me!! LOL

Welcome to the Cove!

I can share with you how we cover safety in our internal audits (we're dual-registered to ISO 13485:2003 and 9001:2000). We do a mini-safety audit under 6.3 Infrastructure and 6.4 Work Environment. Yes, this limits us in how much we can review, but it provides a snapshot of how effective our safety program is and whether any improvements have been implemented. This is a very fine line we have to beware of, and just how far we can go....

I hope this helps.

[Jennifer Kirley]

Gidget is right.

When auditing Safety, base the questions on how the organization maintains personnel readiness and well being in order to achieve product and service quality toward the ultimate goal, customer satisfaction.

The types of questions remain the same. As always, ask for examples and evidence of input/activity/output:

How do you know what is needed?

How do you describe what needs to be done? (procedures, document control)

How can you tell if it's working?

How do you go about improving what's not going well?

How do you go about making improvements if no injuries are getting reported?

What kind of training do you have to do this? How do you know when new or repeat training is needed?

What kind of records do you keep? (document control)

Management review inputs, decisions, actions and follow up

[EJE0622]

Thanks for making my title clearer. This is my first time making a post on here. Your reply helps me immensely. I won't have to go into safety as deep as I thought I would. In your opinion, should my company implement OHSA 18000 for safety or just do ISO 9001:2000. Thanks for your help!

[Jennifer Kirley]

In Reply to Parent Post by EJE0622

Thanks for making my title clearer. This is my first time making a post on here. Your reply helps me immensely. I won't have to go into safety as deep as I thought I would. In your opinion, should my company implement OHSA 18000 for safety or just do ISO 9001:2000. Thanks for your help!

The decision to implement ISO18001 is a business decision, just like ISO 900X. However, I will say that complying with OSHA laws in the U.S. would already require, or be helped by many of the system structuring that a QMS has. The more risky your processes are, the more sense a safety management system can make.

If you have workplace injuries now or have dealt with OSHA fines, you have a solid basis for using a Return on Investment analysis to help decide the value.

[Sidney Vianna]

In Reply to Parent Post by EJE0622

This may be a dumb question, but do I audit our safety program?

Any "proper" audit should have a scope, criteria, objectives, etc... If you are auditing your QMS against ISO 9001, occupational health and safety is TOTALLY OUTSIDE of the scope of your audit. This has been covered numerous times elsewhere at The Cove.

Obviously, any safety program is very important and should be checked for implementation and effectiveness, but there is nothing in ISO 9001 that relates to an OHSMS, even though some of the standards (e.g. OHSAS 18001 and ANSI Z-10) which could be used for an implementation of an OHSMS, have some common requirements with ISO 9001.

Paragraphs 6.3 and 6.4 of ISO 9001 deal with product conformity issues, not occupational health & safety.

[SteelMaiden]

In Reply to Parent Post by Sidney Vianna

Paragraphs 6.3 and 6.4 of ISO 9001 deal with product conformity issues, not occupational health & safety.

And a crane failing and dropping all your product to the floor ruining it, and causing a delay in delivery because you shut the plant down waiting for repairs just because you did not do the safety inspections falls outside of the standard how?

Anyway, the poster didn't say they were auditing safety as a part of quality, just how to audit safety.

EJ, don't get hung up on who is supposed to do what to whom. It is your system, make it work for you. If you are doing safety audits, figure out what you should be looking for. Housekeeping, legal requirements (those mobile equipment inspections), I believe that the OSHA website probably has a lot of info that could help you. We actually partner with OSHA and have them come in and inspect for us. Our corporation has been doing this for at least the last decade plus a few years.