Hot on the heels of the world’s first International Standard for occupational health and safety comes a technical specification to ensure those auditing it are up to scratch.
ISO 45001, Occupational health and safety management systems – Requirements with guidance for use, made standardization history when it was published in March this year. Now, a new complementary technical specification – ISO/IEC TS 17021-10 – has just been published, defining the required skills and knowledge of those bodies auditing organizations that have implemented the health and safety standard.
ISO/IEC TS 17021-10, Conformity assessment – Requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems – Part 10: Competence requirements for auditing and certification of occupational health and safety management systems, is intended to guarantee a harmonized approach to the accreditation of an ISO 45001 certification.
The new technical specification is aimed at auditors, or anyone making certification decisions related to ISO 45001, and will ultimately serve certification, accreditation and regulatory bodies by confirming that auditing and certification decisions related to ISO 45001 have been carried out by those who have the competence to do so.
Catherine Montagnon, co-convenor of the working group in charge of ISO/IEC TS 17021-10 and Head of the French delegation involved in developing ISO 45001, explained that many of those responsible for the development of the technical specification also contributed to the writing of ISO 45001, providing the benefit of their extensive knowledge and experience.
“ISO 45001 contains a number of requirements for which specific skills related to occupational health and safety are required to audit it effectively, such as those relating to terminology, principles, concepts, tools and techniques,” she said.
“Therefore, it is necessary to have a dedicated conformity assessment document to ensure auditors have the right skills to do the job well.”
