Quality, Health, Safety and Environment QHSE Explained

The term QHSE is used as abbreviation of Quality, Health, Safety and Environment in most parts of the world. Sometimes environment is replaced by environmental. These four components combine together to form an integrated corporate management approach and according to this approach all workplace accidents are caused by human error and we can eliminate, reduce, isolate and control these workplace accidents by providing our employees safety awareness, training and of course good administration. Risk assessment and management is taken as integral part of any hse management system. Recently in addition to quality, health, safety and environment, sustainability has also been attached and closely dealt within the same domain. So we can say that in a way sustainability is also part of QHSE.

Evolution of QHSE can be stated as newly developed approach and thanks to revised QHSE management standards which are also based upon the integrated approach and minimizing the documentations. In the beginning of 21st Century this was understood that quality, health and safety departments can be integrated and merged in order to minimize the overall expenses and on the other hand making the QHSE management and monitoring more productive and result oriented.

Taking quality, health, safety and environment as integrated components helps companies to promote quality ( excellence in services and products) and safe operations and zero injuries and illness, also environment part covers (managing to reduce pollution and manage waste), health involves to ensure to manage and minimize occupational illness and exposures.

The integrated QHSE management is widely used in organizations in standardized forms and according to international management standards like quality management standard ISO 9001:2015, occupational safety OHSAS 18001:2007 standard and environmental management standard ISO 14001:2015. Many companies implement QHSE to comply with these standards and the get certificated after some hard work and implementation.

QHSE manager, engineer, coordinator etc is a highly specialized career and is demanding in high risk industries like construction, oil and gas, chemical plants etc. which require to protect employees from safety and health risks and environment from being polluted by company’s activities and at the same time ensure excellence of service and customer satisfaction through quality management.

In order to conclude we can say that QHSE or QSHE stands for an integrated approach to manage an organisations management systems with focus on Quality, Health, Safety & Environment.