ISO45001 and The Occupational Health & Safety Management System Scope

ISO45001:2018 Clause 4.3 is all about the scope of your Occupational Health & Safety Management System (OHSMS), so which parts of your organisation will be included within your system.

Considering your Occupational Health & Safety Management System Boundaries

As we mentioned, you can effectively ring fence the parts of your organisation that will be in or out of the OHS Management System and ISO45001:2018 Clause 4.3 is where you do this.

Here are some examples of the considerations you should make about the scope:

1. External support, or outsourced services may be something you decide not to include.
2. Sites or Locations - your organisation may have more than 1 location, but you only want to include manufacturing and not the sales office for example.
3. Centralised functions may be something that you consider, for example IT services for the organisation maybe something you decide not to include.

Since you have been through Clauses 4.1, 4.2 & 4.4 you will have documented all the thinking that will go into your Scope section, this is an important requirement as it lets you explain the Scope you have selected to anyone within the organisation, clients and of course the all-important ISO45001:2018 auditor.

The actual description of the scope doesn't have to be that long, in fact the shorter the better because it should be clear, don't inject a whole bunch of flowery adjectives and clever talk, just nice simple plain English. Some examples of an ISO45001:2018 Scope are:

• The scope is: provision of consulting and implementation of software solutions for emergency services. Location Unit 42, 99 Letsbe Avenue, Christchurch, New Zealand.
• The scope is: Provision of manufacturing, planning & purchasing support for electronics organisations. Location: 77 Bright Spark Way, Wellington, New Zealand

If you plan to exclude elements of your business, it's a good idea to note this element for example:

• Exclusions of the ISO 45001:2018 standard, Information Technology department – this is a centralised and outsourced area of the business.

This way it becomes clear to everyone what is included in your scope and what is excluded, making it easier for all users of the system.

Unlike say ISO9001 where you can exclude certain clauses, for example design, there aren't really any clauses in 45001 that you would look to exclude. 

Polishing the Scope

I hate the polishing or wordsmithing of documentation, there is just no need for it. It's the same here with your scope, make your best attempt at it and then accept it. As part of your continuous improvement cycle built into your new ISO45001:2018 system you will review the scope anyway so by all means tweak it as you go when review time comes round, but don't hold up the implementation trying to decide if that is the very best adjective to describe what you do, keep it simple.