ISO 45001
Also known as: ISO 45001:2018
ISO 45001:2018 is the international standard for occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS). It uses the Annex SL high-level structure shared with ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, organised around Plan-Do-Check-Act and 10 clauses from context (4) through improvement (10).
Legal context
ISO 45001:2018 superseded OHSAS 18001 in 2018 and is the dominant global OHSMS standard. Its 10 clauses are: 1 Scope, 2 References, 3 Terms, 4 Context of the organisation, 5 Leadership and worker participation, 6 Planning (including hazard identification and risk assessment), 7 Support (resources, competence, awareness, communication, documented information), 8 Operation (operational planning and controls, change management, procurement, contractors, emergency preparedness and response), 9 Performance evaluation (monitoring, internal audit, management review), 10 Improvement (incident / NC / CAPA, continual improvement). Certification is voluntary in most jurisdictions but increasingly required by principal contractors and tender processes.
Practical use
Operationally, ISO 45001 maps tightly onto the model WHS Act's duty framework: Clause 5.4 (worker participation) ↔ s47 consultation duty; Clause 6.1.2 (hazard identification) ↔ WHS Reg 34–38; Clause 9.2 (internal audit) ↔ no statutory equivalent but expected of a mature WHSMS; Clause 10.2 (incident, NC, CAPA) ↔ s38 / WHS Reg incident notification. A platform that drafts and tracks evidence against ISO 45001 clauses produces an audit-ready record by default.
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Related terms
ISO 45003
ISO 45003:2021 is the international guidance standard for managing psychosocial risk within an ISO 45001 OHSMS. It is a guideline (not a certifiable standard) and was the first global ISO standard to address psychosocial hazards in occupational safety terms.
Audit programme
An audit programme is the planned schedule of internal audits across a WHSMS for a defined cycle (typically annual). ISO 45001 Clause 9.2 requires the audit programme to plan, establish, implement and maintain an audit programme — coverage of every clause across the cycle, by competent auditors, with findings driving CAPA.
Management review
A management review is the formal periodic (typically annual) review by top management of the WHSMS to ensure its continuing suitability, adequacy and effectiveness. ISO 45001 Cl 9.3 specifies 10 mandatory inputs and 5 mandatory outputs.
NCR
A Non-Conformity Report records a failure to meet a defined requirement — a WHS rule, an ISO 45001 clause, an internal procedure, a regulator condition. NCRs feed the CAPA register and are the primary lag indicator of system performance.
CAPA
Corrective and Preventive Action is the structured response to a non-conformity or incident: investigate root cause, define corrective action (fix this) and preventive action (stop it recurring elsewhere), assign accountable owners and due dates, and verify the action was effective. ISO 45001 Cl 10.2 governs the workflow.
Platform pillars
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47 WHS and HSWA terms with legal context, FAQs and regulator references.