Anyway, the poster didn't say they were auditing safety as a part of quality, just how to audit safety.
I am very confused about what I should be doing when it comes to ISO 9001 and safety. Someone please help me!!
This International Standard does not include requirements specific to other management systems, such as those particular to environmental management, occupational health and safety management, financial management or risk management. However, this International Standard enables an organization to align or integrate its own quality management system with related management system requirements.
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?
What you call “safety inspection”, others call maintenance checks.
All modern management system standards follow the PLAN-DO-CHECK-ACT model. It is an universal approach to systems deployment. But audits are a component of the CHECK stage. And, the check stage should be preceded of the plan and do stages. There is no point “auditing” something if no effort was put into planning and implementing it.
So, in my opinion, to do an audit of a “safety program” as part of an ISO 9001 internal audit does not make sense. If the organization has a true “safety program”, internal audits of the program should have been planned for, auditors should have been made competent for, etc. Not an add-on to an ISO 9001 internal audit.
As I said, several times, any successful organization has to address many stakeholders expectations. Quality, safety, financial, etc... It makes sense for their business processes to be managed with all such expectations. While compartmentalization of management systems is counterproductive, because it creates feuds within the organization, we have to keep in mind the boundaries and limitations of the management system subsets we operate with.
Integrated Management Systems is definitely the way to go, but that is very different than trying to "find a home" in ISO 9001 for safety programs. It does not fit.
Many quality improvements will beneficially impact an organization environmental and safety performance. Others will detract from it. Top management has to balance all the different objectives at hand.