DENVER HOUSE CONSULTANCY

Home / ISO 45001

Occupational Health & Safety Management

ISO 45001: keeping your people safe, systematically

ISO 45001 is the international standard for occupational health and safety (OH&S) management systems. It gives organisations a framework to prevent work-related injury and ill health, meet their legal duties, and build a culture where safety is part of how work gets done, not an afterthought.

The Basics

What is ISO 45001?

The current edition is ISO 45001:2018. It replaced the old OHSAS 18001 standard, which was withdrawn in 2021, and brought health and safety management into the same Annex SL structure as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. If you already hold one of those standards, ISO 45001 slots naturally into an integrated management system.

Two things set ISO 45001 apart. First, its emphasis on leadership: top management must own health and safety personally, not delegate it to a manual. Second, its emphasis on worker consultation and participation: the people doing the work must be genuinely involved in identifying hazards and shaping the controls that protect them.

Certification follows the same route as the other ISO standards: a two-stage initial assessment by a UKAS-accredited certification body, annual surveillance visits and re-certification every three years.

Key elements of an OH&S system

  • Hazard identification & risk assessment: a systematic, ongoing process for spotting what could cause harm and controlling it.
  • Legal & other requirements: a live register of the health and safety legislation and client requirements that apply to you.
  • Worker consultation & participation: real mechanisms for workers to raise concerns and shape decisions.
  • Operational controls: safe systems of work, permits, method statements, PPE and the hierarchy of controls.
  • Contractor management: controlling the risks created by (and for) contractors and visitors.
  • Emergency preparedness: planned, tested responses to foreseeable emergencies.
  • Incident investigation: learning properly from accidents, incidents and near misses.
Inside The Standard

How ISO 45001:2018 is structured

The requirements sit in clauses 4 to 10, following the same high-level structure as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, with a health and safety lens applied throughout:

Clause 4 Context of the organisation
Understanding the issues that affect your ability to protect workers, identifying interested parties (workers, regulators, clients, unions) and their requirements, and defining the scope of your OH&S management system.
Clause 5 Leadership and worker participation
The clause that gives ISO 45001 its character: visible top management commitment, an OH&S policy, clear roles, and formal processes for consulting workers and enabling them to participate in decisions that affect their safety.
Clause 6 Planning
Hazard identification, assessment of OH&S risks and opportunities, capturing legal and other requirements, and setting measurable OH&S objectives with plans to achieve them.
Clause 7 Support
Resources, competence and training, awareness of hazards and each person's role in the system, communication, and control of documented information.
Clause 8 Operation
Operational controls and the hierarchy of controls, management of change, procurement, contractors and outsourcing, and emergency preparedness and response.
Clause 9 Performance evaluation
Monitoring and measurement, evaluation of legal compliance, internal audit and management review, proving the system protects people in practice.
Clause 10 Improvement
Incident investigation, non-conformity and corrective action, and continual improvement of both the system and your actual safety performance.
Why It Matters

The benefits of ISO 45001 certification

  • Fewer injuries and less ill health: a systematic approach genuinely reduces harm, absence and disruption.
  • Legal protection: clear evidence of a managed approach to health and safety duties.
  • Tender access: increasingly required on construction, highways, utilities and public sector frameworks.
  • Culture and morale: worker involvement builds trust and surfaces problems early.
  • Insurance and cost: fewer incidents means lower direct and indirect costs, and a stronger story for insurers.
  • Integration: combines cleanly with ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 in one integrated system with shared audits and reviews.
How We Help

Denver House and ISO 45001

  • Gap analysis of your current health and safety arrangements against ISO 45001:2018.
  • Building your OH&S system: risk assessment frameworks, legal registers, consultation arrangements and operational controls.
  • Integrating ISO 45001 with existing ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 systems.
  • Internal audits, compliance evaluations and management review facilitation.
  • Support through certification and every surveillance visit after it.

Discuss ISO 45001 with us

Ready to put health and safety on a proper footing?

Whether you're replacing ad-hoc arrangements or a tender is asking for ISO 45001, we'll help you build a system that protects people first and wins work second.

Talk to us about ISO 45001