The Integration Dr Blog

but you can follow us at improvemybusinessnow.com so you don’t miss anything!

Why are we on hiatus?  Read this post to find out:

http://improvemybusinessnow.com/2010/09/24/getting-back-on-track/

Our very own Mary McDonald a.k.a. The Integration Dr. currently has an article published on QualityDigest.com about taking an objective look at your management system. It’s a great read for anyone interested in improving their system, whether its integrated or not. I highly recommend it, here is a direct link to the article. If you have any thoughts or comments on the article feel free to discuss in the comments here.

Organizations that are implementing 3 management systems – Quality (Q), Environmental (E), and Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) – are doing it for a variety of reasons:

• they want to manage all of their requirements under one system;
• they are incorporating, combining, or reducing headcount;
• they are looking for additional savings and efficiencies;
• they are interested in providing information to their employees that are incorporated into one document

What does that one employee document look like?  It may look something like this:

Employees are to manufacture the widget to meet quality and customer specifications (see attached); using safe practice for handling chemicals including applicable PPE (personal protective equipment) – chemical resistant gloves and safety glasses; and if there is any chemical spill, appropriate steps shall be taken including containment and clean-up.

So, we’ve told the employee to make a high quality part (Q), using PPE (OHS), and what to do if there is an accidental environmental impact via spill (E).  The employee shouldn’t look at this and say, “Hey – is this a Q, E, or OHS instruction?”  They should look at it and say, “Hey, this is what I have to do to meet the requirements of my job.”  It should be seamless to them which standard they are meeting; they should meet all requirements, regardless of which standard the requirement originates from.

How to do the integration?  We know from previous posts on integrating Q and E and integrating E and OHS that there are overlapping requirements among the standards.  When implementing the trilogy of standards that are the subject of this post, it is important to remember that, while there are several areas of alignment, including management reviews, internal audits, document and records control, and corrective and preventive actions, there are also several requirements that are unique to one or two of the standards (but not the other(s)).  Therefore, it is important to identify and address the unique requirements, and ensure that they don’t get overlooked in our ecstasy of implementing an integrated system.  What are some of these requirements?  We need to address customer requirements for quality; the environmental aspects/impacts for environmental and health/safety aspects/impacts for OHS; risk management and management of change for OHS; to name a few.

I’d love to hear your comments on your integration – what worked and what didn’t?  Any tips or advice for others?  Please share!

Depending on your industry, you may be asked to integrate an Environmental (E) system with an Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) system to make your system more robust; to save time and effort; or to comply with customer requirements (to name a few of the many reasons cited for integration of E and OHS).

With the latest revisions of ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001, integration is very easy to implement.  [A joke within the consulting field is that one standard is identical to the other with the exception of the “global replace” – and it’s not too far from wrong].  Since there is virtual identical redundancy in requirements in most cases, integration is the way to get a bigger ‘bang for the buck’.  However, there are important differences between these two standards, and you want to ensure that you are not overlooking the differences between the two standards while doing the implementation.

Unique areas of the standard: for OHS, the organization must consider acceptable risk and risk management; management of change; participation of workers; and incident investigation. For EMS, the focus is on environmental impact rather than impact to workers/safety.

Areas that are similar include a Policy (4.2); hazard (OHS) or Environmental (E) identification (4.3.1); legal and other requirements, and compliance (4.3.2 / 4.5.2); objectives and programs (4.3.3); roles and responsibility (4.4.1); competence, training, and awareness (4.4.2); communication (4.4.3); documentation (4.4.4); control of documents (4.4.5); operational control (4.4.6); emergency preparedness/response (4.4.7); measurement and monitoring (4.5.1);  nonconformity, corrective and preventive actions (4.5.3); control of records(4.5.4); internal audits (4.5.5); and management review (4.6)