Freelancers & Risk Assessments

[Guest lightnix]

I thought Freelancers had to provide RA's to cover their work already?

So I believe and (despite my alledged retirement) it is something on my To Do list. As I´m not sure whether I´m "competent" to do so, I´ll probably have to get someone to help me. Even at "mates rates", I expect to fork out a couple of hundred quid for the privilege.

 

However, I have never ever been asked to provide an RA and neither has any other freelancer that I know of. If I do, how will it affect my chances of being offered future work, particularly if (as I am intending) my RA includes a statement that I consider it unsafe to be on site for longer than 12 hours (unless operating) ? Pretty damn negatively, I´ll bet :** laughs out loud **: Even if my RA is accepted, I can see a few "tense moments" on the horizon, should I ever have the temerity to try to enforce them.

 

This is how it is right now: The emplo... er, sorry... "clients" don´t want to demand RAs from freelancers, because they are afraid the will be unable to crew their shows. The ´lancers don´t want to wave RAs around, because they (justifiably, IMHO) fear that it will be a "career terminating move" for them.

[Guest lightnix]

Hmmm... two days later and no comments ? I have to confess a little surprise and disappointment here.

 

Let´s try again...

 

FREELANCERS

Have any of you been asked to provide RAs for your work ?

Have any of you done them anyway ? If not, why not ?

Have any of you presented RAs of your work to your clients ? If so, what was the response ?

 

COMPANIES

Have any of you asked your freelancers to provide RAs for their work ? If not, why not and do you have any plans to ask them in the future ?

Have any of your freelancers provided, or offered to provide, RAs for their work ? If so, what was your response ?

 

ANYBODY ELSE

What do you think ?

[Bryson]

Sorry 'nix, we do try not to disappoint..

 

Anyway, for the (infrequent) freelance stuff that I do, I have a set of generic risk assessments (mostly generated from the ones I've done for my "proper" job). For the one reasonably large gig I did last year myself and one of the guys I was working with prepared specific ones (of which the time was billed!) - this was for a council so they asked for them. Aside from that instance, no-one has ever asked to see them or even asked if they exist. I have the luxury of having a real job and a real employer, so they've provided me with training that I benefit from in my freelancing. I've never felt the need to present them if they weren't asked for.

 

On the other side of the equation, when I employ freelancers at the "real" job, I can't say I ask for RAs (although, knowing the way some of them work, I suspect that, like me, they do have them). Perhaps I should, but the work my freelancers carry out is pretty much identical to the work covered by my own risk assessments.

[gareth]

As a freelancer, I've never once been asked for a risk assessment. Nor do I know of any freelancers who have. It's something that I thought about occassionally, but never quite seemed to get around to.

 

The incorporation of the new company and the resultant change in the way that I'm now 'selling myself' has focussed the mind, however - a set of risk assessments found themselves at the top of the "to do" list, and they're almost finished. A health and safety policy is also under construction - I'm not legally obliged to have one, as I don't have any employees, but I feel that it's something I should have in place.

 

The whole situation with freelancers and RA's is something that we should all look into in a little more depth, I think. I'm certainly looking at making it a necessity for anyone I use on a freelance basis, even if that entails assisting them fairly heavily - i.e. providing them with a 'stock' RA template which they can adopt and then ammend to suit themselves. I know that defeats the object of creating risk assessments, in a way, but in the short term, with the unlikelihood of yer average freelancer coming up with a set of RAs off their own bat, it seems to be the most obvious way around it.

[colinmonk]

One major issue that arrises from Freelancers having to provide RA's is that an RA is essentially supposed to be specific to the job, written for it - not stock template, or else theres no point in doing one, RA's arent a paperwork exercise to be done because youve been asked, but as a piece of H&S, to asses any potential risks and minimise them.

 

For this matter, many freelancers working on a job as crew, or riggers. or ops whatever, may and will probably not know what they are required to do until they get to site, and also they may and will probably not know what is in the rig, may not have visited the venue before etc.... So how are they then to produce a valid RA?

 

Essentially the production company or employer (and were talking about freelancers bieng hired as crew arent we?) will produce the technical RA for that specific Production, the crew are then to read that!

 

If you are the designer, production company and you are hiring freelancers then its down to you to produce that RA is it not, because you are in the best position to carry out that task.

[gareth]

One major issue that arrises from Freelancers having to provide RA's is that an RA is essentially supposed to be specific to the job, written for it - not stock template, or else theres no point in doing one, RA's arent a paperwork exercise to be done because youve been asked, but as a piece of H&S, to asses any potential risks and minimise them.

That's the theory, yes. But I'll bet that a fairly large number of the risk assessments that exist in our business at the moment, even if they're supposedly produced on an individual basis for specific jobs, are little more than cut-and-paste jobs.

 

Maybe it's wrong, maybe in some instances it's not - after all, the risks involved in tailing in a 3-phase supply, for example, don't really vary from one job to the next, so why shouldn't a risk assessment be generic for such common tasks? The other side of the coin is when you come up against risks which are venue- or job-specific (unusually awkward rigging positions requiring special access considerations, or a set with some unusual in-built lighting/electrical elements, for example) - in cases like that everything should be risk-assessed on an individual basis and the findings duly noted. But once you've carried out a risk assessment for, say, using a Zarges ladder, then the risks involved aren't generally going to change unless the circumstances of its use also change considerably, so why not keep the same stock template RA for such activities, issuing them as necessary from job to job and considering any changes of circumstance/situation as required?

 

When it comes down to it, the fact that a risk assessment for any activity exists within an organisation in the first place is an indication that the risks and necessary controls associated with that activity have been considered, and such findings recorded as required. So regardless of whether a particular risk assessment is 'recycled' from one job to the next, the evidence of consideration of those risks is there, and that should be more than satisfactory from a H&S point of view.

[Bryson]

I agree with Gareth here - it's unreasonable to have to rewrite risk assessments for each and every show as the procedure is frequently exactly the same. If I wrote a full set of RAs for each and every show I'd be writing something like 900 assessments a year!

[Bryson]

Moderation: Moved to Safety 26/01/04

[colinmonk]

The point I am making is that you cant just print off the same risk assesment for every job, and as a freelancer many wont know what the job entails or be able to asses the risks as they wont know till they get there...

 

Gareth understood what I meant I think - things like Zarges would be the same risk each time, but you still have to produce each risk assesment per production. So the usual bits would be in their, yes maybe copied from another, but then you need to asses the risks for that particular job. Like rigging, get-in, equipment etc...

 

If you arent going to do that then theres no point in producing one in the first place, as your not assesing the risks relevant to that job...

[Bryson]

If you arent going to do that then theres no point in producing one in the first place, as your not assesing the risks relevant to that job...

I can't say I agree entirely, Colin - if all you're doing is a cut and paste job and changing the name of the venue, you're just wasting your time (and time, my friends, is money..). What is wrong with having a generic risk assessment that "stands," while you make a mental risk assessment for each job that will usually say: use the generic RA? If, in your mental RA you decide that this job is a bit different, then by all means do a new paper copy one.

 

It's a question of efficient use of your limited time. I'm not saying you shouldn't think about whether the next job is different, just suggesting a superiorly efficient way of dealing with the fact that the majority of jobs are not beyond the scope of your generic assessments.

[gareth]

The point I am making is that you cant just print off the same risk assesment for every job, and as a freelancer many wont know what the job entails or be able to asses the risks as they wont know till they get there...

Regarding your first point, no-one's suggesting an identical RA for each and every job. There are going to be many common aspects, with a few variations depending on the circumstances of a particular job which need to be taken into account.

 

As for your second point ... no, quite often a freelancer will not know what their specific duties will be until they arrive on a job site. But we're getting to the point where the HSE are expecting freelance contractors to create and maintain risk assessments, so they're going to have to be fairly generic about it in situations where they're not fully appraised of the job prior to it commencing. There's going to have to be an element of anticipating what they might be asked to do, and basing a risk assessment around that. If a HSE inspector wants to see a risk assessment in the aftermath of an incident, I don't imagine they'd accept "I didn't know what tasks I was going to be doing" as a valid excuse for not having any RA paperwork at all - I imagine they'll look far more favourably on someone who has, at some point, come up with a set of generic risk assessments for tasks that they commonly find themselves doing and then relies on the production company to assess any job-specific risks.

[SparkySteve]

So regardless of whether a particular risk assessment is 'recycled' from one job to the next, the evidence of consideration of those risks is there, and that should be more than satisfactory from a H&S point of view.

eek!

it's unreasonable to have to rewrite risk assessments for each and every show as the procedure is frequently exactly the same.

Hmmm!

If I wrote a full set of RAs for each and every show I'd be writing something like 900 assessments a year!

 

I'm sorry, but at the end of the day, the assessment is there for that specific risk... nothing is ever the same. How many times when working a show have you ever ever seen the EXACT same show?? possible 99% never, that means everything is different each time therefore different risks. If 1 singular show can change so much, how can you possible "cut & paste" from one show to another

unreasonable

satisfactory

a phrase "safety comes first" springs to mind... making sure something is safe cannot or should not be an "unreasonable" requirement or task on anyone's behalf. that is why we have to do them! how would it look in court (god forbid it never happens) if you had supplied a RA and something went wrong that you hadn't accounted for because it had been "cut & paste" from a different event. they would have a field day!! how many times when writng a risk assessment do you remember something that you couldn't possible have remembered if you were just cutting and pasting - like colin says... your not assessing tht job, you assessing a prior job!

[colinmonk]

Re your first point Gareth, Bryson did suggest using the same RA for each and every job - as it is "unreasonable" to have to rewrite them for each production! Im sorry but that isnt really a HSE Attitude is it.

 

ok - the point of a risk assesment is not too get in the good books of a HSE inspector is it? No! Therefore you dont jus produce a risk assesment on the basis that (s)he may ask for one. The risk assesment is there to help you reduce risks and ensure that all people around you understand them and work safely.

 

I was making the point that I think it will be difficult for a freelancer who doesnt know what a job entails until they arrive on site to produce a valid and useful risk assesment. And the production company themselves would also be producing a risk assesment for which will encompass the work you are doing, they are producing the Production Risk Assesment.

 

Bryson, risks may not change very much for your environment I understand this as you are based in a "Local authority venues, doing artistically justified but sadly underpatronised theatre...." therefore same venue, different shows, but the production company produces the production RA's and you produce the House RA's which as the house never changes I can accept that many of the risks dont, but we are talking about Freelancers out on site...

[gareth]

Steve, I have to ask ... have you actually read and digested the previous posts in this thread before replying? Evidence suggests not ...

 

We're not discussing RAs for a performance situation - of course individual shows are all different, no-one needs you to tell them that. The point that Bryson and myself are trying to make is that focussing a lantern at the top of a Zarges for next week's show is very much like focussing a lantern at the top of a Zarges for last week's show. Or any other show, come to that. Same goes for things like loading counterweights, packing trucks, tailing in, running cables, etc. etc. So, for risk assessments pertaining to a get-in/fit-up type situation for tasks which vary little, if any, from job to job, why re-invent the wheel?

 

You do it that way if you like, it's up to you. But the reailty of the business is that there are many tasks that carry a similar or identical combination of risks from one fit-up to the next, and to which a risk assessment can apply repeatedly without the need for alteration.

[Bryson]

I'm sorry, but at the end of the day, the assessment is there for that specific risk... nothing is ever the same.  How many times when working a show have you ever ever seen the EXACT same show??

 

Not often. But we're not talking about artistic content. The question that needs to asked is "how many times have you rigged a light with exactly the same procedure?" (for example) And the answer to that is many thousands of times.

 

QUOTE

 

unreasonable

 

QUOTE

 

satisfactory

  a phrase "safety comes first" springs to mind..

 

The phrase "reasonably practicable", from the Health and Safety at Work Act, comes to my mind.

 

how would it look in court (god forbid it never happens) if you had supplied a RA and something went wrong that you hadn't accounted for because it had been "cut & paste" from a different event.

 

But that's the point - I'm not saying that you don't consider (in your mind) the risks associated with a specific task. What I'm saying is that in many cases, you won't need a new piece of paper to cover it. Sometimes you will. If something was missed, then you didn't do the first part as well as you should have and it wouldn't have ended up in your crisp and shiny new Risk Assessment anyway. In fact, I would argue that some kind of paperwork fatigue would set in after a while and you'd actually miss more stuff.

 

your not assessing tht job, you assessing a prior job!

 

No - you're assessing a method of work, which may be the same from job to job.