by David W. Solomon
The ballot on the second Draft International Standard of ISO 45001 Occupational health and safety management systems – Requirements with guidance for use closed in July 2017, and the document received a resounding 88 percent approval internationally. It also received approximately 1,600 recommendations for improvement. ISO/PC 283’s Working Group 1 (ISO/PC 283/WG1) was tasked to review the comments received and to recommend whether a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) would be needed, or if the standard could proceed to publication.
At the sixth meeting held held September 18-21 in Melaka, Malaysia, the ISO/PC 283’s Working Group 1 (ISO/PC 283/WG1) dispositioned the comments. Some of these comments were of a technical nature, triggering the FDIS stage of the ISO project publication process, although the committee had achieved consensus to publish the standard with agreed changes.
While the usual translation period for an FDIS is currently two weeks, this has been extended to four weeks to comply with a request from AFNOR for an extended period in which to prepare the French translation. Consequently, the FDIS ballot is now scheduled to start on November 30, 2017 and to be completed on January 25, 2018. If the FDIS ballot is successful, there will then be a short period of final preparation of the text, before ISO 45001 is published in February 2018.
About the author
David W Solomon is head of the Australian ISO 45001 international delegation.