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ISO 45001-2018 Clause 10.1 General
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PLAN |
DO |
CHECK |
ACT |
Clause 10.1 Breakdown
Q. How where improvements accomplished, by enhanced controls, by better utilization of resources or by a clearer understanding of stakeholder requirements?
10.1 General
This clause is a proactive requirement to make improvements. The clause looks at the prevailing need for improvement and the need to resolutely look for opportunities for improvement and implement the necessary actions.
Clause 10.1 might be short, but it may well bear a deceptively large obligation on an organization...
Clause 10.1 states "The organization shall determine opportunities for improvement (see Clause 9) and implement necessary actions to achieve the intended outcomes of its OH&S management system".
The use of the 'shall' verbal form with the words 'determine opportunities'' is interesting, one man's opportunity is another's risk... However, by pointing to clause 9 Performance evaluation the organization is also being directed to clause 6.1 Actions to address risks and opportunities and indirectly to clause 4 Context of the organization to determine the opportunities for improvement.
Continual improvement is first mentioned in ISO 45001 2018 section 0.1 Background where it states "The adoption of an OH&S management system is intended to enable an organization to provide safe and healthy workplaces, prevent work-related injury and ill health, and continually improve its OH&S performance." This is further supported in section 0.3 Success factors part h) "continual performance evaluation and monitoring of the OH&S management system to improve OH&S performance", as well as being part of the PDCA cycle as detailed in section 0.4 Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle which states: "The PDCA concept is an iterative process used by organizations to achieve continual improvement". Before the main clauses, there is one final reference to continual improvement in section 3 Scope which states: "Consistent with the organization's OH&S policy, the intended outcomes of an OH&S management system include: a) continual improvement of OH&S performance".
Taking a look at the main clauses 4 to 10 within ISO 45001 2018 continual improvement appears several times as shown in the diagram below:
Useful integrated management system cross references
ISO 9001
ISO 14001
•ISO 14001-2015 10 Improvements
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