The Principal Consultant (Rob Charlesworth) is a fully qualified professional, experienced consultant and trainer who has extensive practical experience in a wide range of industrial sectors and organisations. He is used to communicating with all levels of a business organisation from the shop-floor to the board room.
He can offer:
Help, advice and support to SME’s
Rob was a senior safety professional for a number of years, prior to his retirement and was heavily involved in defining the safety strategy of an international stainless-steel group, based in Finland, and provided Health, and Safety advice to the UK Board of directors who were responsible for UK based subsidiaries.
Specialist Health and Safety Consultancy
He spent a number of years working as a senior manager responsible for EHSQ issues at the Upper Tier COMAH (Control of Major Accident Hazards) site in Sheffield, that was part of the international stainless-steel group, and has continued to support the site, with their COMAH related requirements.
Rob has been involved in the COMAH regulations since their implementation, and one of the issues he had was finding local specialist support, consequently Rob had to research, develop and implement systems and procedures himself, that satisfied the requirements of the “Competent Authority”. The knowledge and experience that he has gained has helped him to provide specialist HSE consultancy services to other companies, two of which were also involved in the COMAH regulations.
Environmental Consultancy
The Upper Tier COMAH site in Sheffield was one of the first sites in the locality which needed an environmental permit from the Environment Agency to be able to operate, due to having a “Prescribed Process” (Acid Pickling) on site. Consequently, Rob has many years of experience in managing environmental issues in accordance with regulatory requirements as he was involved with the original “Permit” application and the subsequent requests for permit variations, in response to changing business circumstances. One of the original requirements was to develop an environmental management system, which was delivered. Initially, this was a stand-alone system, but in 2010 it was combined with the safety and quality management systems into a single integrated system, which made it much easier to manage.
Management Systems Support
Dealing with the development and implementation of any Management System (SMS, EMS and QMS) can be a minefield. It’s often best to get some help and advice along the way to ensure you end up with a robust system which meets the requirements of the international standard and actually delivers benefits to the business.
Throughout the majority of Rob’s career, he has been involved with management systems, initially quality then safety and eventually the environment. These were originally developed as separate systems, but in 2010 when he became responsible for EHSQ issues on site, he integrated the separate systems into one. Since then, the international standards ISO45001:2018, ISO14001:2015, and ISO9001:2015 have been aligned, which makes it easier to develop a single integrated management system.
Rob is a fully trained, experienced auditor and sub-contract auditor, who undertakes third-party auditing across the international standards for a UKAS certified accreditation body (CARES – Certification Authority for Reinforcing Steels). This gives him a unique perspective when developing or integrating management systems, as he understands both the requirements of the standards and how it would be audited by an accreditation body. As a consequence, he has been approached by several companies, in the reinforcing steels sectors, who were seeking either to develop and implement a management system or to combine their current systems in one that is fully integrated.
Orchard HSE can offer a tailored solution for you, from mentoring your employees, to developing manuals and procedures as we have done it all before with great results.
We aim to keep things simple and only create documentation and procedures where they are needed. More paperwork means more audits, means more work, means employees are less likely to get involved!
Internal Auditing & Legal Compliance Auditing
Getting an independent review of your management system can be useful in identifying any areas of potential non-compliance, especially prior to a certification audit and can provide a useful action plan to ensure any further external audits go smoothly.
We can offer a service to get you back up to speed if your own internal audit programme is falling behind. We have found that in many companies, employees have multiple responsibilities and many changing priorities, which results in the audit programme slipping. This is something we can support you with, and quickly get your audit programme back on track and even help you to train more auditors if needed.
One area where many companies particularly value external help is auditing against the Health, Safety and Environmental legislation that applies to the site activities and processes as required by ISO45001 and ISO14001.
It is a duty of all companies to ensure that they understand what their legal responsibilities are and should aim for legal compliance as a minimum. We can give you an expert and fully independent assessment of your compliance status and if required we can develop you a “Legal Compliance Register” or just update yours if needed.