Lean OHS® Curriculum - OHSAS 18001

Understanding OHSAS 18001 requirements , needs, and implementation methods can be a difficult task. Organizations spend a great deal of time and money in simply trying to understand what they need to do. This time and money is better-spent improving the business, providing products or services to the customer, and reducing then occupational health and safety footprint. In order to eliminate the time and expense of discovery, mistakes, and trial and error Pinnacle Enterprise Group (Pinnacle) has created the Lean OHS® Curriculum. The Lean OHS® Curriculum is a comprehensive approach that provides your organization with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively develop, implement, and maintain of a lean and advanced OHS.

Pinnacle's approach is more than a simple OHSAS 18001 certification program. Simply addressing generic requirements and passing a Certification Audit just buys you an expensive certificate to hang on a wall. To bring long-term value the OHS must be rational, practical, and efficient. It must continually define, describe, and control all business processes (including technical and regulatory processes) than can contribute to the amount of occupational health and safety impact. Furthermore, maintaining registration (certification) mandates a sustained mind set and proficiency. Simply put, your staff must have the skills and knowledge needed to take ownership of the OHS and have the ability to maintain and improve it into the future.

To foster this organizational commitment, Pinnacle employs and assigns only seasoned professionals that will transfer the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve certification and support the continual improvement philosophy.

As part of the Lean OHS® Curriculum, a Pinnacle Project Director is assigned to your organization to serve as your teacher, coach, and mentor through each element of the project. He or she transfers the knowledge and skills to your staff by working hands-on with them at your facility(ies). Each element of the Lean OHS® Curriculum and each visit by the Project Director are customized to ensure that your organization can effectively develop, implement, manage, use, and improve your OHS while maintaining certification. One of the objectives is to eliminate the dependence on additional outside assistance.

The Lean OHS® Curriculum can include the following elements. Each element is custom tailored to fit your organization's specific needs:

The world's top Registrars have certified Pinnacle's clients with a 100% success rate. This is why Pinnacle can guarantee that you will get certified the first time.

Furthermore, each custom tailored Lean OHS® Curriculum is delivered at a fixed cost and is typically completed within 2-4 months.

Contact Pinnacle to discuss your Lean OHS® Curriculum.

Schedule a Lean OHS® demo and see for yourself.

Lean OHS® Documentation - Overview

"One important lesson I've taken away from Pinnacle's innovative approach to [Environmental] Management System is that [OHS] documentation doesn't need to be cumbersome, overwhelming and boring."

Nick Tousi, Sr. Vice President
Nova Analytics Corporation

OHSAS 18001 requires that, at a minimum, your OHS be rationalized and articulated by:

  1. An OHS Scope statement
  2. An Occupational Health and Safety Policy
  3. A description of the main elements of the OHS including their interaction and related documents
  4. 11 Documented Procedures (Pinnacle refers to these as Support Processes)
  5. At least 13 Record types.

Unfortunately, these requirements are traditionally misunderstood resulting in the following false paradigm being applied to an OHS:

While this paradigm may be appropriate for describing a documentation structure, companies rarely operate in this way. In fact, this paradigm is typically the cause of over documentation. The resulting paperwork glut quickly becomes "shelf-ware" and a burden to the OHS.

Pinnacle developed a realistic and practical process-based model than consists of three major components:

  1. Management Policies or Processes (MP) - Policies or processes that set the mission, vision, and direction of the organization.
  2. Support Processes (SP) - Processes that facilitate, monitor, control, and improve the OHS, but do not directly impact the product/service and do not directly pose hazards to health and safety.
  3. Core Processes (CP) - A set of processes defining and controlling all product/service realization activities that can directly pose hazards to health and safety.

The figure below illustrates the model and the relationship of these components:

In turn, these three components are supported by:

  1. Work Instructions (WI) - Specific or individual task level instructions that support the fulfillment of Core or Support Processes.
  2. Forms/Records (F) - Standardized forms that, when completed, collect information that is retained as records. A form becomes a record when it is written on or completed. When forms contain enough task level instructions they can replace Work Instructions.

This process model is the foundation for Pinnacle's Lean OHS® methodology. The resulting OHS documentation exceeds the requirements of OHSAS 18001 while laying the foundation for a rational, practical, and Lean OHS®.

Lean OHS® Documentation - OHS Map

OHSAS 18001 requires an organization to describe "the core elements of the management system and their interaction" and "provide direction to related documents" at the highest level. This is the role of the traditional "Occupational Health and Safety Policy Manual." However, OHSAS 18001 does not require an "Occupational health and safety Policy Manual." The intent is to articulate and demonstrate that you view your business as a set of interrelated processes (vertical and lateral process integration).

"This auditor has conducted over 850 audits and I must tell you that the documentation system observed at Axcel is one of the finest I have ever seen. The way the 'Lean QMS Map' connects to all other documents and then to the records themselves is excellent."

Edward Sykes, Lead Auditor
TUV Rheinland of North America

Pinnacle's advanced methodology includes the replacement of the traditional "Occupational health and safety Policy Manual" with Pinnacle's excusive OHS Map. The OHS Map functions as an interactive interface for your OHS. The OHS Map:

  1. describes the scope your OHS,
  2. identifies how the OHSAS 18001 is applied in your organization using a "smart number" system,
  3. identifies what processes make up your OHS, and
  4. describes the rational interaction between your OHS processes.

This unique approach eliminates the non-value-added traditional "Occupational Health and Safety Policy Manual" and the time organizations spend creating, editing, and maintaining it.

Below is Pinnacle's model of an interactive OHS/EMS/QMS Map that replaces a traditional "Occupational Health and Safety Policy Manual", "Environmental Policy Manual" and "Quality Manual":

Schedule a Lean OHS® demo and see for yourself.

Lean OHS® Documentation - Process Mapping

OHSAS 18001 requires an organization to follow a process approach when managing its OHS. Process Maps are ideal for this purpose.

A Process Map is a graphical representation of a process. It represents the entire process from start to finish, including:

  • process inputs and outputs,
  • activities and responsibility,
  • pathways, parallel processes, and process loops,
  • decision points,
  • key measures, metrics, objectives, and targets, and
  • interaction with other processes.

Depending on your objectives, a Process Map can represent the entire process at a high or detailed level, allowing detailed analysis and process optimization. Furthermore, a Process Map is an ideal instructional tool for assuring effective training and process consistency. Once Process Maps are established, an organization can work towards ensuring its processes are effective (the right process is followed the every time), and efficient (continually improved to ensure processes use the least amount of resources).

Process Mapping is the fundamental OHS documentation methodology used of the Lean OHS® Curriculum. (Read "Process Mapping & Process Redesign"

Traditional text procedures do not serve your OHS well. In general, they are long, confusing, unable to show parallel processes, unavailable (in binders), and require strong reading comprehension and retention skills. These issues are magnified in companies that must also contend with language and cultural differences.

Process Maps on the other hand can be 1/5 the length, show a greater amount of detail and complexity, are easy to follow, and are readily available (posted on walls, accessed via intranet, etc.). Process Maps play on the strength of the brain to recognize and recall patterns. They take a very complex system and make it a simple step-by-step operation that is visually intuitive. Inconsistencies and open loop processes are easily identified when placed in a graphical model. The Process Maps are then easily modified and used to train people quickly. Consequently, improvements are introduced in a matter of minutes. Having the ability to develop and maintain process mapped documentation as your organization evolves is a key component of the Lean OHS® methodology.

Contact Pinnacle to discuss your Lean OHS® Curriculum.

Schedule a Lean OHS® demo and see for yourself.