ISO 45001 Consultants
A safety management system your operators helped build - which is the only kind that passes clause 5.4, and the only kind they follow.
SHE Awards 2024 — Best Health and Safety in Manufacturing, for a three-year safety culture programme.
From £4,000. Certification-ready in four to eight months.
ISO
Why businesses call us
Three triggers, usually. A main contractor or client makes 45001 a condition of the tender list. A growing headcount makes the directors nervous about what they can't see any more. Or there's been an incident, and “we need to get properly on top of this” has board attention.
The fourth is quieter. A business that held OHSAS 18001, let it lapse rather than migrate before the September 2021 deadline, and has now been asked for a certificate it no longer has. That's more common than people admit, and it's usually a shorter job than starting from nothing — the foundations are often still there.
The thing 45001 asks for that the other standards don't
ISO 9001 · ISO 14001
Subject
The workforce is the subject of the system. Processes are designed for them, controls are applied to them, training is delivered to them. Consultation is good practice, and nowhere is it a clause you can fail.
ISO 45001
Participant
The workforce is a required participant in the system. Clause 5.4 obliges you to consult and involve workers — specifically including non-managerial workers — in building, running and improving it. Not as a courtesy. As a requirement an auditor will test.
That single difference is why 45001 is the standard most often implemented badly. You can buy a quality manual. You can buy an environmental legal register. You cannot buy your operators having helped write the safe system of work - and an experienced auditor can tell within an hour whether they did.
What clause 5.4 actually asks
The clause is specific. Consultation means their views are sought before a decision. Participation means they're in the room making it.
Non-managerial workers must be
Consulted on
- The health and safety policy
- Roles, responsibilities and authorities
- How legal requirements will be met
- Objectives and how to achieve them
- Controls for contractors, outsourcing and procurement
- What gets monitored, measured and audited
Non-managerial workers must
Participate in
- Identifying hazards and assessing risks
- Deciding how to eliminate hazards and reduce risks
- Determining competence and training needs
- Deciding what gets communicated, and how
- Determining control measures and whether they work
- Investigating incidents and non-conformities
Abridged from clause 5.4 d) and e) of ISO 45001:2018. The full lists are longer; these are the items that decide most audits.
This is what clause 5.4 looks like when it works.
Our three-year safety culture programme at The Rakem Group won Best Health and Safety in Manufacturing at the SHE Awards 2024 - judged by an independent panel against the whole of UK manufacturing. Culture change is worker participation done properly, at scale, over time. It's the hardest part of 45001, and it's the part we have evidence for.
The hierarchy of controls
45001 is explicit that when you reduce a risk, you work down this list in order - and that an auditor can ask why you stopped where you did.
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Most systems we inherit are built upside down - heavy on PPE and procedures, light on engineering, and with no record of why elimination or substitution were ruled out. The standard doesn't just want the control; it wants to see you considered the better ones first.
The hazards most systems miss
Hazard identification under 45001 goes further than machinery and chemicals. The standard requires you to consider how work is organised and the social factors around it - and most risk registers stop well short.
- How work is organised — workload, working hours, shift patterns, and how much control people have over their own pace
- Social factors — victimisation, harassment, bullying, and the leadership behaviours that allow them
- Fatigue, particularly across rotating shifts and long runs
- Lone working, and working at unusual hours
- Contractor and visitor exposure, not just employees
- How past incidents and near misses were investigated, and whether the causes were found
If your risk register has never mentioned workload, hours or how supervisors behave, it isn't complete under 45001 — and it's exactly this territory the 2027 revision is heading further into.
How long it takes
Aspects and impacts, legal register, objectives, operational controls, documented information.
Weeks 1–2 - Gap analysis.Two days on site, a written report, and a fixed quote before you commit to anything.
Weeks 3–10 - Build.Stage 1 and Stage 2 with a UKAS-accredited body, with us on site for both.
Weeks 11–16 - Embed.Internal audit programme, first full cycle run alongside you, management review facilitated.
Weeks 17–20 - Certification.Faster if you already hold 9001 or 14001 - the structure is shared. Slower if participation has to be built from nothing, because you can't rush it and the auditor can tell if you tried.
What it costs
£4,000 to £10,000 for ISO 45001 as a single standard, fixed after the gap analysis. The gap analysis is £900 standalone and credited if you go ahead.
Because we're also a working health and safety consultancy, the system can come with competent person cover under Regulation 7 if you want it — one firm for the standard and the day-to-day. Details →
Common questions
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What's the difference between ISO 45001 and OHSAS 18001?
45001 replaced 18001 — the migration deadline was 30 September 2021 and 18001 certificates are no longer valid. The substantive differences: 45001 requires top management involvement rather than delegation, mandates worker consultation and participation as a clause you can fail, puts hazard identification in a proactive frame, and shares its structure with 9001 and 14001.
Our OHSAS 18001 certificate lapsed and we never migrated. Where do we start?
Usually not from scratch. The foundations are often still there, just unmaintained. A gap analysis will show what survived. The parts most often missing are the 45001-specific ones: worker participation processes, the hierarchy-of-controls record, and hazard identification that covers organisational and psychosocial factors.
What does “worker participation” actually mean for an auditor?
Evidence that non-managerial workers were genuinely involved - not that a form was signed. An auditor will talk to operators without a manager present and ask whether they helped write the procedure they're following, whether they've raised a hazard and what happened, and whether they know how to stop a job. Their answers are the evidence, and they can't be prepared in advance.
Do we need ISO 45001 if we already have decent health and safety?
Not necessarily. If a customer or main contractor has made it a condition, you need the certificate. If nobody has, a working system without the certificate can be entirely adequate — and cheaper. We'll tell you which on the first call.
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Can ISO 45001 be integrated with 9001 and 14001?
Yes, and it's usually the right way to run more than one. All three share the same high-level structure. What's specific to 45001 — participation, hierarchy of controls, hazard identification — sits inside that shared framework. Adding it to an existing system typically costs about a third of doing it standalone.
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Should we wait for ISO 45001:2027?
No. It's at committee draft stage, two full stages before final, and publication is a year or more away. Certify against 2018 now and transition later — if participation is done properly the transition will be small. Waiting for a draft to become a standard just means a year without a certificate.
Building, rescuing, or reviving a lapsed 18001?
Twenty minutes on the phone will tell you which it is and roughly what it costs. If you don't actually need the certificate, we'll say so.
Where we work. Greater Manchester and the North West as standard: Manchester, Bolton, Bury, Stockport, Rochdale, Oldham, Preston, Blackburn, Warrington and Trafford. Appointments elsewhere in the UK where the travel works for both sides.