ISO 45001

ISO 45001 is the international standard for occupational health and safety management systems. It was published in 2018 and replaced OHSAS 18001, which has now been withdrawn.

It is voluntary. Certification does not change your legal duties, does not satisfy them, and is not a defence if something goes wrong. What it does is give an organisation a recognised structure for managing safety, and give clients a way of assessing that structure without visiting.

That second point is why it matters commercially. Many public sector frameworks and larger private clients ask for certification at prequalification, so for a contractor it often functions as a condition of bidding rather than a philosophical choice.

What the standard asks for

Leadership and participation. Senior management has to own the system rather than delegating it to a safety adviser, and workers have to be genuinely consulted. This is the area most strengthened compared with OHSAS 18001.

Context and interested parties. Understanding what affects the organisation from outside, including client requirements, supply chain and regulation.

Hazard identification and risk assessment, which for a contractor means the RAMS and COSHH work already required by law, structured and reviewed.

Operational control, competence and communication, which covers inductions, toolbox talks and credentials.

Monitoring, internal audit and management review, with corrective actions tracked through to closure.

Continual improvement, evidenced rather than asserted.

Where certification comes unstuck

The recurring failure is a system that exists on paper and a site that runs on habit. An external auditor’s job is precisely to find the gap between the two, and they do it by following a thread: taking a stated procedure, asking for the records it should generate, then asking someone on site what they actually do.

The second failure is corrective actions left open. Findings raised at the last internal audit, still open at the next one, tell an auditor the improvement loop is not closing. That single pattern causes more non-conformities than most technical issues.

The practical answer is unglamorous. Run the internal audits on schedule, record the findings, assign them, close them out, and keep the evidence where it can be sampled. Where a finding recurs, fix the cause rather than the instance. That cycle is what Sync’s health and safety audits and compliance management are built to support.