Elf and Safety

[Return of the Silver Fox]

As far as I understand things, the industry are heavily hindered by rules and mandates imposed by the HSE and therefore I cannot even contemplate blaming the very people who are directly and negagtively affected by rules and protocols that do not follow commonsense thinking.

The industry do not lobby the HSE for changes, the HSE implement these rules themselves and so from my point of view, there's only one body to blame ...

Pete,

I have to disagree. The codes of practice issued by the HSE are very straightforward and are common sense.
They have, in the majority of cases, come about due to major disasters (piper alpha, chernobyl, flixborough), or following significant ill health trends (asbestos, noise, etc).
The problem is that it is often not H&S people who apply or interpret the regulations and then the press exagerate the impact.
Examples of some of the rubbish blamed on the HSE are here -- http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/

 

[Tom]

The health and safety profession is the target of government cuts and media bashing like never before.
Given that the aim of Health and Safety is to minimise risk to acceptable levels and protect health/well being why is it so vilified?

H&S is currently subject to government cuts due to the high levels of savings that are to be made in government spending. Every government department is subject to job & budget cuts, that includes the HSE. Anyone who happens to be a consultant etc to a government department will find their services not being required as they are a cash cost.
Anyone in a goverment department with the slightest line management responsibility has a H&S responsibiltiy of some kind. It is not necessary to have dedicated H&S managers, unless there is such an area of responsibility that warrants a dedicated post.

It is always vilified in the media because it's an easy target for headlines ----- It's health & safety gone mad... Most stories turn out to be either a load of tosh, or some idiot coming up with their own H&S rules because of the tosh they have read in the media,

True H&S is the use of common sense measures and requires the most basic of a risk assessment in the majority of cases.

The electrician above is a prime example. Either he is a professional electrician who is taking a risk by leaning over or stretching up and knows what he is doing wrong to save a bit of time without getting a bigger ladder or moving it along (and his time is his money as he is probably a self employed sub contractor), or he is an idiot who will fall over stab himself and drill his arm and electrocute himself and the good samaritan that runs over to help him.

 

[Tom Allen]

we, the paintballers should be very careful where we tread with regard to H&S, as we currently fall foul on at least one item within our paintball equipment.

I'll leave this one up to you to figure out.

 

[Marcus Geezer]

we, the paintballers should be very careful where we tread with regard to H&S, as we currently fall foul on at least one item within our paintball equipment.

I'll leave this one up to you to figure out.

Is it the swiss army knife I carry in my bag as a bit of a . . . well . . . swiss army knife really?

 

[Tom Allen]

but is it swiss, and do the army know it's a knife.?

 

[DJForbes]

i have my 2 brothers both in H and S in the oil industry. i feel from what they and other offshore workers tell me it is vilified because of the silly things that restrict work and make a job take twice as long.

one story as an example.
one man walking across a canteen on a off shore rig is stopped just as hes about to sit down. the health and saftey officer asks him what hes just done wrong. turns out his coffee didnt have a lid on it. he was made to walk back across the room to get a lid. upon questioning why he had to go back accross the room the answer was that if he didnt have a lid and he spilled the coffee someone could sue even tho he would take the lid of to drink it anyway

 

[Dskize]

I've been working on building sites for over 20 years now and H+S has frankly gone way over the top ,four hour inductions that everybody zones out from after the first 10 minutes and an on-site nurse who has a supply of free condoms to give away.

Life is now accounting for the bottom feeders and because 'A' is an idiot , 'B' has to suffer , unfortunately it turns out that 'A' is also likely to be the guy that puts in a compo claim at any opportunity which is where I think the real problem lies .I recently took a 120v belt after an idiotic spark who didn't know and didn't ask how to do something wired a mains supply to a control (Extra Low Voltage) connector ,I've kissed the National Grid before so after a bit of swearing and kicking a door I put it down to experience ,my own fault for assuming others were competent,however I was asked if I wanted to take it further by the electrical contractor and declined

It's now common to have a company ask there employees to inform them of any safety risks they observe or any bad practices being displayed by there colleagues , there are incentive schemes in place ,shares ,canteen vouchers etc and guess what ...as soon as the incentive is withdrawn the employee suggestions also stop.

I realise there has to be a happy medium somewhere but the extra time and costs incurred by the current H+S policies must be way counterproductive and frankly as soon as the deadlines on a contract starts to loom most of these policies go right back out the window.

 

[Duncan Berry]

im currently studying for my NEBOSH Construction and i can tell you, pretty much everything in there is about covering the employers arse against liability law suits and to stop the HSE from shutting them down

 

[Bolter]

They have done away with "common sense", and have replaced it all with "Health and Safety". Its ridiculous. I work on building sites, and you aren't trusted one little bit with any tool.

 

[Return of the Silver Fox]

They have done away with "common sense", and have replaced it all with "Health and Safety". Its ridiculous. I work on building sites, and you aren't trusted one little bit with any tool.

That's not down to Health and Safety Regulations, it's down to those interpreting it and applying it.

I'm a Health and Safety manager for 1500 people and the site has a very diverse range of operations. One thing my team fully recognise is that you can't apply a blanket approach and the majority of your solutions are known and practiced by those doing the job. This approach has led to us reducing lost time accidents (>3 days) from 65 per year to 2 per year with a target of zero.

What many companies forget is that what they see as cheap, simple controls are anything but. Providing PPE costs money, is a poor control and has significant ongoing costs that are rarely recognised when specifying it as the primary protection.

Many so called safety experts have never operated on the shop floor and fail to see that if you hire competent people they will know the hazards and appropriate responses to a situation. That is not to say that supervision isn't an important element in ensuring appropriate risk controls are applied.

Lids on coffee cups and wearing hard hats while roofing (unless you swinging roof trusses round) don't feature high in my list of concerns.