Work At Height – Hard Lessons to Learn
Work at height accidents will not stop, the numbers killed, injured and paralysed will never reduce unless and until people choose to make safe choices and develop safe habits. Experienced work at height professionals need to bear in mind their example to apprentices and the inexperienced. If you are a role model, will what you practice become a good habit for others or a dangerous example which might lead directly to death or a wheelchair existence?
Check out the video in the featured videos section to hear and see some hard hitting footage from Matt Terry and Jason Anker.
Matt focusses on behaviour and uses examples of everyday experiences and attitudes to highlight how and why the safety message can be lost. he also introduces Jason’s story.
At the age of 24, Jason was paralysed from the waist down after falling 10 feet from a ladder. It has taken Jason many hard years to be able to talk about how the accident has affected not only his life but the lives of his family and friends. His story is gripping and appalling because all it took was one mistake one occasion where Jason failed to speak up and take charge of his own safety and his whole life was wrenched apart. Even years after the accident Jason’s father bursts into tears. The inability to walk is the easiest thing for Jason to bear. What are the hardest things? Watch the video in the “featured videos section” – you’ll be shocked and moved to hear what Jason has to teach.
Does Safe Design Cost More, and How Can We Strike the Right Balance?
The 
cost of safety in design…
Here’s an interesting debate on design safety and cost that was recently discussed at this year’s Safety Expo – this relates to work at height in particular. The exchange was made into a youtube video by the AIF and I have attached that video in the featured videos section. Some very good points are made about whether considering safety at the design stage does in fact cost more.
Important issues such as buildability and maintainability can have major effects on the design and if these happen at a late stage then costs to re-design and get additional approvals can rocket. Also the point was made that the maintenance costs over the life of a building can be as much as 200 to 1 (so that for every £1 in building costs, £200 will be spect over the building’s life in maintaining it! This cost could be considerably reduced by looking at ease of maintenance. For instance, if accessing the roof of a building to maintain plant, equipment or the building fabric requires specialist equipment and specially trained contractors, the costs are already shooting up…
One of the most hard hitting points though was made by a member of the audience who said:
“everyone has the right to expect to have a safe place from which to work and if that’s the premise that people start with when they’re designing, that colours their judgement on what they should be providing and very very cynically, I reckon if it was a law passed that the designer had to use the equipment first, then I’m sure some of the equipment we see being used would never be there, because they wouldn’t get on it!”
Check it out under “featured videos”
Health and Safety.. Do We Need It?
I can hear the collective shuddering groan, and picture the eye rolling at these 3 dreaded words.. but what exactly is it about the concept of health and or safety that triggers this antagonism?
In fact what is “health & safety” in this day and age?
Is it a UK wide ban on playing conkers unless every kid is issued with goggles?
Is it the banning of pancake races?
or is it bans on cheese rolling competitions, knitting in hospitals and even toothpicks?!
To read certain newspapers or watch certain tv personalities, anyone might be caught up and enjoy the humour aimed at this frequent butt of jokes and popular derision. But perhaps we should ask ourselves what the newspapers and Jeremy Carp-stun’s of this world get out of their hilarious attacks. Might it be a somewhat raised profile, more exposure, more readers, more sales, more MONEY?
"Health & Safety Consultants? How many points are they worth?"
Shame on them for their selfishness and completely callous disregard for the real pain and distress caused to victims and families when health and safety standards are abandoned. To encourage this moronic bandwagon jumping is to be complicit in that agony, because by telling such half truths and lies, they undermine the effective safeguards which make the UK a safe place to live and work.
Is it the mass awareness of all the horrors in the world (bad news is so much more newsworthy than good news), that causes fear and at the same time encourages the few who might be dishonest and purely greedy to make cynical claims? And does this have a knock on effect to authorities and companies who seek to eliminate any possible chink in their armour where someone could find their precautions wanting? Then blame everybody’s enemy “health and safety” for their own flawed decisions. And is money-saving tight fistedness dressed up in the guise of health and safety to disguise the reality that no one can be bothered? – So just impose a ban and blame health and safety. Faced with stringent budget cuts, do such authorities take informed advice or isn’t it just quicker and cheaper to impose the blanket ban / make the kids wear goggles?
There are certainly many foolish examples out there to provide fodder for endless ridicule, I am sure I’m not the only practitioner to have cringed over channel four’s “The Fun Police” presented as a “day in the life” of a H&S consultant who amongst other daft things, wittered on eccentrically to cameramen about the dangerous “acorns on the drive” whilst zealously sweeping them up, but in reality, should we really scrap the whole idea and the laws that go with it because of a few misguided individuals?
To answer that perhaps we should some of the ghosts hidden in the health and safety mists so rarely exposed to the media spotlight….the victims maimed or permanently disabled by negligent and dangerous workplace situations, or the wives and children of people killed in the workplace due to appalling health or safety standards, or maybe we should look at the good old days before all these silly regulations came along to stifle business enterprise and school sports days..
health and safety in the 'good old days'..?
or perhaps we could find some enlightenment by looking at examples from abroad where there are no such costly impediments?
Health and Safety?
So does health and safety matter?
Anyway you look at it the answer should be YES, because if you’re in business, you have reponsibilities to operate the business in accordance with the law of the land, and, part of that involves fulfilling health and safety responsibilities. In this country we should be very proud of our health and safety – after all as Lord Young pointed out in his ‘Common Sense, Common Safety’ Report: Today we have the lowest number of non-fatal accidents and the second lowest number of fatal accidents in Europe.
Most of us ARE doing it right, sure there are some who seem to have lost their way, but doesn’t every profession have a few of those? So let’s stop whinging, read the papers, don’t get mad, just take what they print with a huge pinch of salt (but not too much – it’s bad for your heart!), and keep on trying to save people in this country from the pain and loss associated with workplace accidents. It might be unsung but that doesn’t make less worthwhile.
And let’s remember this thought from the HSE: “health and safety is about saving lives, not stopping them.”
HSE Construction – Is Your Website Evidence for Prosecution?
HSE Construction Principal Inspector Tells All!
February – HSE Construction Review Meeting
As always the HSE Construction Review was a riveting meeting producing a few revelations and some interesting and hair raising tales of the cowboys and villains who are still a common facet of the wild wild west construction industry.
February is an important month in the diary for anyone involved in Construction safety in the south west. Why? because it’s when the annual Construction Review meeting happens. This is a meeting organised by two safety institutions The Institution of Safety and Health (IOSH) and the local smaller cousin Avon Occupational Safety & Health Group (AOSH).
The reason this meeting is one of the most well attended though, is the Speaker for the meeting: Andrew Kingscott, Principal Inspector for the HSE. Andrew tells attendees all about how the fatal incident statistics stack up for the past few years, how they are looking so far this year, and what aspects of construction are producing the biggest problems. This might be extremely important information if you are wondering where the HSE scrutiny might be over the next 12 months…
More will be revealed in the next article, but to get back to the website evidence… This was referred to a few times during Andrew’s presentation and he explained that the first thing he now does when an incident occurs, is go to the company website of those involved and “snapshot” it.
Several fascinating examples were shown of the way website owners had proudly displayed photos of their people hard at work. Unfortunately the photos also showed the most appalling safety standards – evidence of law breaking provided for all to see (and use in court!).
As an illustration of this: The photo below used to appear on the website of Cotswold Geotechnical (holdings) Ltd. who employed Alex Wright a 27 year old engineer. Alex was killed when a trial pit he had entered collapsed in on him and he was asphyxiated. Cotswold Geotech are currently in court charged with corporate manslaughter. This photo adds to the picture of a company using completely unacceptable practices, allowing entry to a trench over 12 feet deep which was not shored.
This photo appeared on the cotswold geotech website before the fatal incident in which Alex Wright died
Websites are a great business tool and can raise the profile of any business, but maybe it’s time to review at the work practices you may be advertising with the help of a health and safety professional….