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Be safe .....


kerry davies

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I can't believe I missed this but in June last year a scaffolder spotted working between 13 and 18 metres above a car park was reported by a passing member of the public for being unsafe. Despite his employers providing harnesses and safe methods of work he went ahead and worked with no edge protection or harness. He was well trained and experienced so had no excuse really. Worse still he had a trainee with him setting a poor example.

Terrance Murray of Blackburn pleaded guilty to safety breaches and was sentenced to 26 weeks in prison, suspended for one year and 100 hours of community service.

He was also ordered to pay costs of £500 and a victim surcharge of £115.

Just goes to show that the duty of care we have to ourselves can be a legally binding requirement as well as the duty of care we have to "those around us" be they be fellow workers or innocent bystanders.
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These days everyone's a health and safety inspector. Especially the ones with a traffic warden mentality who get a hit out of taking a photo of someone just so they can report them. Sometimes it takes WEEKS to get the right picture though. <_<

 

One of the reasons I stopped doing the George Square job with Northern Light was because it turned into a cesspit of HSE weaponry by another company who wanted the contract. We were followed about on the square by two people who alternated shifts and used a camera with zoom lens to "collect evidence". It was very obvious what they were doing by the way they were clearly cheating camera angles to suit their desired result. I'm glad to say that in over 20 years on that job we never had a single accident.

 

Same reason I stopped working on Carillion contracts. Aggressive blanket health and safety. The final straw there was when I was pulled up for not using kickboards and a scaffold board without a trapdoor. This was on a scaffold with the board one rung off the floor. So not really practical to enter it via the trapdoor and kickboards were a bit pointless at that height too.

 

While safety is important, it shouldn't be used as a weapon or business tool.

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H&S! The Act is an important milestone in industry, but the implementation of it is probably the greatest reason for work being done in China and sent here by the container load.

 

Scaffolding is definitively unsafe during the assembly and disassembly phase, but training, skill and experience can be used to mitigate the risk, soon we'll have to have single storey structures to eliminate the WAH risk, or use a Chinese contractor!

 

Where I work, I'm forbidden from washing a vehicle because of the Legionella risk, but I'm expected to take vehicles to the local (five miles!) jetwash which is apparently OK. The stupidity is that I work at a hospital who should have legionella measures for control and testing, and records to prove this. I doubt the local petrol station could spell Legionella or know what it is, let alone have reasoned proof of the absence of Legionella.

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H&S! The Act is an important milestone in industry, but the implementation of it is probably the greatest reason for work being done in China and sent here by the container load.

 

Scaffolding is definitively unsafe during the assembly and disassembly phase, but training, skill and experience can be used to mitigate the risk, soon we'll have to have single storey structures to eliminate the WAH risk, or use a Chinese contractor!

 

Where I work, I'm forbidden from washing a vehicle because of the Legionella risk, but I'm expected to take vehicles to the local (five miles!) jetwash which is apparently OK. The stupidity is that I work at a hospital who should have legionella measures for control and testing, and records to prove this. I doubt the local petrol station could spell Legionella or know what it is, let alone have reasoned proof of the absence of Legionella.

 

Friend moved flat recently, amongst the wad of paperwork the agents produced, at landlords and eventually tenants cost , was a Legionella report, residential 1 bedroom flat in block of 6.

 

Proof was a photo of the kitchen hot tap running , into stainless sink , with a IR thermo pointed at the stream reading 16.6 C....

 

It`s science, see... ;-)

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The picture above shows a scaffolder building a scaffold. There are no handrails because he hasn't put them up yet. That picture was taken at exactly that point by someone who waited with their camera for that exact moment. The picture was probably chosen from a large selection as looking the most "dangerous" before they submitted it to HSE for their own purposes.

 

It's a bit disappointing that he's not hooked his safety harness onto a magic sky hook or whatever nonsensical attachment point an office worker invented to tick a box. That's not uncommon for scaffolders. They often wear a harness as a token nod to HSE despite it not actually being practical to use one when you're building or removing a scaffold in the first place.

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 The final straw there was when I was pulled up for not using kickboards and a scaffold board without a trapdoor.  This was on a scaffold with the board one rung off the floor.  So not really practical to enter it via the trapdoor and kickboards were a bit pointless at that height too.

 

I had an identical situation on a site and having been red carded for it I called in HSE, 3 cars arrived very quickly and the occupants dispersed all over the site, it was closed down within an hour of the call. H&S idiot got sacked and main contractor gave us a lot of jip for a few days, then a wide berth as we pointed out other issues.

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Come off it Clive, they had built handrails as the scaff rose yet hadn't bothered with kick boards three levels below him. Slapdash.

 

If indeed someone had spotted him and waited for the opportune photo op he must have been a right idiot at lower levels to gain their attention.

 

We all, including me, have anecdotes about mad Elf'n'Safety Nazis but they are irrelevant to this topic. Anyone who uses H&S as a weapon is out of order but high quality H&S is actually a valid business tool. It can be sold very successfully especially in terms of legal costs, damages and continuity of production. Glasto wouldn't have happened for the past 20 years without Tim Roberts and the Event Safety Shop, it would not have been licensed.

 

Every single study of the cost effectiveness of safe working shows it pays. Since 1974 I estimate that reducing occupational fatalities has saved the UK half a million man years of possibly lost productivity and the savings in benefits not paid to people disabled at work must be in the hundreds of billions.

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I totally agree with your comments Kerry insofar as the improved protection and safety is priceless.My big bugbear is the inflexible way in which A persons ideas/rules get implemented with little means of negotiation or appeal. I personally have called HSE 3 times for a resolution to a problem and they have attended the sites on all 3 occasions, two resulted in site closure and the dismissal of the safety officer [I assumed just moved to a different site], the 3rd with an understanding we could use footwear without toecaps for a specific situation which was an absolute PITA for the main contractor/safety officer as others also wanted the exemption.
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Without knowing the full story you can't speculate. The scaffold was not complete. Specific kickboard brackets may have been on a different material delivery and until the scaffold was complete their full functionality would not be required.

 

What I see here is an axe-grinder with a zoom lens looking for a power hit.

 

I've got a very low opinion of HSE activity now. It all started off fine with sensible things like steel toecaps and hard hats where appropriate, but has degenerated into a very lucrative business. It's also largely responsible for the mass deskilling that has occurred in the UK since the mid 90's, where traditional deep training has been replaced by crash courses working on the principle that any certificate is good enough.

 

The only people who think HSE are doing a good job are people earning high salaries in the safety industry.

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I totally agree with your comments Kerry insofar as the improved protection and safety is priceless.My big bugbear is the inflexible way in which A persons ideas/rules get implemented with little means of negotiation or appeal. I personally have called HSE 3 times for a resolution to a problem and they have attended the sites on all 3 occasions, two resulted in site closure and the dismissal of the safety officer [I assumed just moved to a different site], the 3rd with an understanding we could use footwear without toecaps for a specific situation which was an absolute PITA for the main contractor/safety officer as others also wanted the exemption.

 

A recent example I had to deal with was the facilities management of a venue within a museum mandating that to drive a MEWP in addition to your IPAF full, 5-point, PPE is mandatory. I'm yet to have anyone justify what risk is mitigated by wearing safety googles when ascending to 4m to focus a pinspot, nor how the high vis of the driver is important but for those on the ground isn't relevant, but it was non-negotiable apparently.

 

It is this blanket "Well site rules is 5 point PPE at all times so that's what you've got to do" without actually having done a risk assessment to reach that conclusion beyond it being easy to enforce - the "Building Site" transformation hitting the events/theatre world at the moment is rife for petty bureaucrats butting up against experienced, competent and safe people. A friend of mine has just embarked on a career change as an inspector for HSE so I look forward to some chats with him about this!

 

On the other hand I often find it difficult convincing people that no, the fire escape route out the back of the warehouse really is important and absolutely has to be kept clear; or that when stacking flight cases on a truck you really really should wear steel toes. So not really sure there's a coherent argument here beyond if we're making rules they should make sense and we should make it easy for people to follow them - consider fire escapes when planning working space layout; buy decent boots for your staff so they don't find them uncomfortable - don't insist on rules they can see aren't helping them or they'll ignore the ones that will.

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TBH most of the scaff on buildings seen put on tenements here , its all tubes and few battens until its mostly complete then they batten and ladder it.

 

Admittedly when they tryed to steal scaffolding off this building , did notice it wasn`t usual crew because the thieves were wearing high viz and harnesses against real scaffolders whose PPE was well worn designer t-shirts.

 

 

It can be sold very successfully especially in terms of legal costs, damages and continuity of production.

 

 

 

That is the telling phrase `it can be sold` , H&S by the yard, cheaper if you buy the whole roll.

 

In the times when collars in the boardroom may be felt over corporate manslaughter and people get suspended custodial sentences for not following mandated training.

 

Being able to buy a few yards of H&S arms length between management and anything dodgy occurring is worth all the money.

 

The Legionella test above, Edinburgh has had issues with it in cooling towers in recent past so its a hot topic, but testing with an IR non contact thermo into a moving stream against a relective background just ain`t working, and the actual felt temp of the water was actually near scalding, not even common sense went inot that report. But someone went on there one day checking for Legionella course, got a shiney certificate and can now bilk 80 quid a hit whilst in doing the similarly laughable Energy Performance Certificate for another 200.

 

They have utterly no clue or understanding of what they are doing , but they have received appropriate training, so any comeback ends there, the training `organisation` will be long gone or will refer to its accreditation, blame the accused for not following training, or the `no longer with us` instructor.

 

It has created an entire industry of one day course certification factories, PAT testing being another classic example.

 

Its safety theatre, giving the appearance of safety without actually helping, like the Legionella example and sure plenty of passed PAT , it can be actively detrimental to safety.

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Its safety theatre, giving the appearance of safety without actually helping, like the Legionella example and sure plenty of passed PAT , it can be actively detrimental to safety.

 

I left someone most offended when I told them they couldn't use their mangy extension lead, even though it had a current PAT sticker. (The cord grip had failed and there were inner cores visible at the plug). They had no understanding at all, other than "Green sticker means it's safe"

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