In order to comply with clauses 4.3.2 and 4.5.2 under OHSAS18001, the differences and similarities between these two clauses must be clearly understood.
Clause 4.3.2: Legal and Other Requirements
In terms of this clause, an organisation must establish, implement and maintain a procedure for identifying and accessing the legal and other occupational health and safety requirements that are applicable to it.
This clause therefore directs that an organisation firstly needs to identify all laws and other requirements which it must comply with which relate to health and safety.
The identification of applicable legal compliance requirements should be undertaken by an individual who is competent to do so, such as a person who is legally trained (attorneys, advocates etc) in order to ensure that none of the relevant requirements are overlooked.
A list of these legal compliance requirements must be compiled in the form of a legal library, database or register.
Health and Safety Legal Compliance
Sources of legal compliance requirements could include:
- National, provincial and municipal legislation
- Decrees and directives
- Permits, licenses
- Orders issued by regulatory agencies
- Customary/indigenous law
- Treaties
- Conventions
- Protocols
“Other” requirements to which an organisation must comply could include inter alia:
- Agreements with customers
- Non-regulatory guidelines
- Voluntary principles
- Codes of practice
- Agreements with community groups
- Public commitments of the organisation
- Company requirements
It is critically important that these “other” requirements are not overlooked, and are also properly managed.
This clause then directs that the organisation must have access to the aforementioned requirements, so it is not sufficient to simply list the applicable requirements.
Further, this information needs to be kept up to date, and there must be a procedure to communicate the legal compliance and other requirements to employees and interested parties. Updates to the relevant requirements will need to be communicated to these parties too.
Clause 4.5.2: Evaluation of Compliance
As it states, this clause directs that an organisation must establish, implement and maintain a procedure for periodically evaluating compliance with the applicable legal and other requirements which were identified under clause 4.3.2, and that records of the results of these evaluations must be kept. The frequency of the periodic evaluations may vary for differing legal compliance requirements.
In order for an organisation to comply with this clause, it will need to undergo health and safety legal compliance audits. Legal compliance auditing should only be conducted by individuals who are competent to do so, such as individuals who have been legally trained.
It is further important that an organisation is audited against all of the laws which are applicable to it – not only National Legislation, and not only against the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
It is a common problem that organisations are not aware of the Provincial and Municipal by-laws which are of application to their operations – this exposes the organisation to significant risks, since the by-laws quite often attract substantial penalties for non-compliance thereto.
There are roughly 250 pieces of South African legislation that relate to safety, health and environment which could be applicable to any organisation. It is therefore fitting that these legal compliance audits should be conducted by individuals such as attorneys or advocates, who are comfortable with reading, interpreting and applying legislation.
Conclusion
Based on the above discussion, it is evident that the management of Health and Safety legal compliance is critical in order to achieve and maintain OHSAS18001 certification.
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