C&G Safety & Environmental has been contracted by engineering firm Mabey Bridge to act as CDM Co-ordinator under the Construction (Design and Management Regulations) for the development of a new manufacturing facility at its Chepstow base.   The project will make the £70m firm the UK’s biggest manufacturer of towers for wind turbines. The £38m investment will double the size of the 13,140 square metre plant to enable it to fabricate monopiles and wind turbine towers up to 5m in diameter and 40m in length for onshore and offshore applications. 240 new jobs will be created.

The appointment of a CDM Co-ordinator is a legal requirement for larger engineering and construction projects. The co-ordinator provides specialist advice on health & safety and risk management, ensures competent firms are appointed to do the work and sees that the requirements of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 are met. John Oldmeadow of C&G Safety & Environmental is taking the lead role on this one and we will also be completing a series of site visits, attending meetings to advise the client on key safety issues and assist them in assessming the safety performance of contractors.

C&G Safety & Environmental has been called in to help ensure the safe management of contractors at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and Hull Women and Childrens Hospital.

Facilities management specialist HSG Zander, a European leader in FM, brought us in to help bring in systems for managing contractors at the hospital, update their health and safety documentation, produce new risk assessment and generally upgrade their existing safety management system.  C&G has carried out a risk assessment and developed safety policies for managing areas ranging from lift installation and servicing to medical gas supply and energy supply.  We have also developed a Permit to Work policy covering relevant areas of risk such as working in confined spaces, working at height and hot work.

Most of us use the services of an insurance company not just for our insurance needs but also to carry out thorough inspections, tests and examinations of the plant, equipment and machinery which we have within the business, typically forklift trucks.

In a situation such as this imagine that the insurance inspector identifies that one of the trucks has a serious defect with its lifting chains making it unsafe to use. The inspector contacted you and advised that it needed to be taken out of service immediately pending corrective work.

A few days after the visit by the insurance assessor, you are then contacted by your local HSE office. They had been told of the faults with the forklift truck and wanted to know what was being done about it.

Why did the insurer reported this?

Regulation 10 of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations states that the competent person completing the statutory inspection must do the following:

“Where there is in his opinion a defect in the lifting equipment involving an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury, send a copy of the report as soon as is practicable to the relevant enforcing authority.”

Technically, the competent person completing the inspection should always tell you that they need to report the defects to the HSE but this doesn’t always happen. So we would suggest that if you are informed that any item of equipment or plant has a serious defect, ask whether it’s serious enough to be reported to the HSE or other any other authority.

Whilst its true that you can’t stop the report from being made, you can take steps to demonstrate that the truck was taken out of service immediately, that you have commissioned a company to complete the works required, and systems have been put into place to help prevent this happening again.

Remember

Your plant, equipment and machinery should be under a regime of regular maintenance to make sure that they can’t get into a condition whereby a serious defect report would need to be made in the first place.  Review your recent reports and if you find that serious reports have been brought up before then re-examine your current maintenance arrangements.

HSE and Local Authority inspectors will soon embark on a round of over 3,000 inspections centered on those with LPG installation at their sites. If you are within scope you should have received and completed a questionnaire within the past few months.

However, if you received but choose not to complete the questionnaire then prepare yourself for a visit. A selection has been made and this will be a mix of people who completed and returned the questionnaire but all of those who choose not to.

If you think you might be one of those who will be visited (or simply if you have a LPG installation at your site) use the following key points to review your current arrangements;

• Storage vessels. Details of the type, size and number of bulk tanks, their condition, separation from buildings etc.
• Environment. The safety of the location, e.g. whether the tank is protected from vehicle impact, the presence of safety signs and delivery facilities.
• Pipework. The safety of both visible and underground pipework including the materials used, condition, protection from damage and the inspection regime.
• Risk of fire/explosion. Factors which increase the likelihood of a leak entering buildings, e.g. routing of pipework.
• Management. The overall management approach, including the training of staff and the implementation of plans to replace buried metallic pipework.

If you require any assistance with this matter please contact us.  Our expert Dangerous Goods Safety Advisors (DGSA) and safety consultants are here and ready to help you.  Just call 01453 800100 or contact us using the form on this website.

HSE inspectors are to launch an intensive inspection initiative aimed at stopping dangerous practices on building sites across Great Britain. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) wants to raise awareness of construction site risks and prevent unnecessary injuries and deaths. During 2008/09, 53 workers died and 11, 264 were injured, across Great Britain, while working in construction.

The inspection initiative – starting on 1 March – will focus on refurbishment or roofing work. Inspectors will make unannounced visits to ensure that sites are managing work at height safely and are in good order.

Philip White, HSE’s Chief Inspector of Construction said:

“Each year too many construction workers are needlessly injured or killed while working on site. While some sectors of the industry have made real improvements in recent years, we are really concerned about standards in the refurbishment sector, particularly on small projects. HSE does not think a lax attitude to health and safety in one of the more dangerous industries is acceptable, especially when many of the incidents are completely avoidable by taking common sense actions and precautions. This is the third year running we have run initiatives like this and, after these latest inspections, we hope that we can report back that we have found good practice and safely operating sites. However, if we find poor practice that is putting the lives of workers and, in some cases the public, at risk we will take action; this could include closing sites and prosecuting those responsible.“

Note: Last year inspectors visited 1,759 sites and 2,145 contractors and issued more than 270 prohibition notices to stop dangerous work – much of it relating to working from height.

If you need any help or assistance with health and safety our expert health and safety consultants can help you From health and safety policy development to noise and COSHH risk assessment, safety audits and staff development, just call us on 01453 800100 or visit us at www.outsource-safety.co.uk. We also provide safety services to the construction industry including CDM Coordinator, construction site safety visits, method statement and risk assessment development and health and safety policy work. Please contact us on 01453 800100 for an informal chat or visit our website for more information.

As most businesses will already be aware, at present a person who has suffered some loss can bring a personal injury compensation claim with no financial risk to themselves whatsoever. If they win the defendant pays the solicitor’s costs and fees, including a special bonus – the “success fee”. If they lose their solicitor agrees not to charge you for their work – the no win no fee arrangement.

In addition, their solicitor will have arranged an after-the-event insurance policy (ATE insurance) which will pay for medical reports, court fees, mediator’s fee and the defendant’s costs which normally they would pay if they lost the case. Further if they win, the defendants have to pay the premium for the ATE insurance (which may be thousands of pounds) and if they lose the premium is self-insuring so they don’t have to pay for it then either.

However, all of this could be set to change. Lord Jackson has completed a review of personal injury litigation costs and has recommended that ATE premiums are no longer payable by defendants who lose personal injury claims. Also he has proposed that the success fee – instead of being paid to the claimant’s solicitor by the defendant – is paid by the claimant out of the their compensation. Hence if you win there is a fee.

Whilst it is true that these proposals are revolutionary they do have the strong backing of the senior judges so it is likely that they will be put in to force in the not too distant future. Rest assured that we will keep you posted on any further developments.

If you need any help or assistance with health and safety our expert health and safety consultants can help you From health and safety policy development to noise and COSHH risk assessment, safety audits and staff development, just call us on 01453 800100 or visit us at www.outsource-safety.co.uk. We also provide safety services to the construction industry including CDM Coordinator, construction site safety visits, method statement and risk assessment development and health and safety policy work.

The Employment Agency Standards (EAS) inspectorate has reported that eleven out of twelve employment agencies it investigated were failing in their health and safety duties. If you do use agencies you should be aware that they share the burden of good health and safety with you and must play their role to ensure that their staff are safe whilst working on your premises.

The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 (CEAEBR) clearly sets out the safeguards which should be in place. In total, the investigation found evidence of 57 infringements. Of particular concern were the breaches of the CEAEBR health and safety requirements. These state that an employment agency may not, “introduce or supply a work-seeker to a hirer unless the agency or employment business has obtained sufficient information from the hirer”. Specifically, the agency must identify from the hirer “any risks to health or safety and the steps the hirer has taken to prevent or control such risks”.

If you’re using employment agencies:
• Supply your agency with copies of relevant risk assessments.
• Set out details of the experience, training, qualifications and any particular authorisations required.
• Remind the agency of their legal responsibility under the CEAEBR to pass on the information about the risks of the job and to check that the workers they supply will meet all of your requirements.
• Ask them to sign to confirm that they have fulfilled all of these responsibilities.

If you need any help or assistance with health and safety our expert health and safety consultants can help you From health and safety policy development to noise and COSHH risk assessment, safety audits and staff development, just call us on 01453 800100 or visit us at www.outsource-safety.co.uk. If you would like to be able to manage all of your risks online use our tool at www.safety247.co.uk, contact us for a guest log in.

The death of a seven-year-old, who’d managed to gain access to scaffolding, led to a successful prosecution by the HSE.
Background
Lovell Partnerships Ltd erected a scaffold so that its staff could repair a chimney flue whilst controlling the risk of falling from height, all well and good you might think. The plan was to put the scaffold up, complete the work, and then take it back down again shortly afterwards. However, work was delayed due to an unexpected hold-up and the scaffold remained in place.
As the scaffold was there with no one using it, local children soon adopted it as a playground. They even built a den on the roof of the building. However, twelve days after the scaffold was erected, seven-year-old Adam Triffin fell from it to his death.
Prosecution
The subsequent HSE investigation identified that the accident happened because the scaffolding had been in place long after the time when it should have been needed. The HSE Principal Inspector stated that had the scaffold been removed promptly when it was no longer needed the accident would not have occurred leading to a fine of £75,000 and costs of £46,109 against the company.

Rough justice
You could argue that this was a little heavy handed. Although the company had left the scaffold in place this was due to unforeseen circumstances, further, the company had taken steps to make access more difficult including the removal of access ladder to the lower levels of the platform. However, in this case access was made from the balcony of the building which children did have access to (the area was not fenced off as a construction site and the work area was in the middle of a housing estate), had the company netted the scaffold to prevent this access the courts decision could have been different.

Lessons
If you leave items plant, equipment or access you could be at risk. Construction sites are an attraction to children and the Courts recognise this fact when considering cases such as these. Take some time to review your current arrangements and see if you would pass this test, if you need help in this simply contact us for some free advice and assistance.

When you hire an item of plant or equipment you are often given a short introductory training course. The aim of the short session is to give rudimentary advice about the operation of the equipment and its key features but are you then competent to operate this machine?

Familiarisation training is meant to be just that. If you already have a licence for the operation of an item of plant machinery (lift truck, elevating work platform, excavator) or an item of machinery (chainsaw, drilling rig, stump grinder) then this training will show you the specifics of that machine. It is not a replacement for what could be a 1, 2 or perhaps 5 day training course.

5 days, that’s a lot of time!
Don’t worry. Unless you haven’t operated the equipment before a full training course may be just a day. The durations refer to complete novices and almost all of the plant and equipment courses which we provide can also be offered as experienced worker assessments where you skip the training and go straight to a practical and theory test. If you are taking this route you should either be replacing an expired licence or be very experienced with the equipment. I you’re not sure the assessment would be the right route simply think of your car test, could you pass again or would you have bad habits which could cause a fail?

In any case, the best thing to do is to speak to one of our experienced course coordinators, they’ll be able to guide you through the process and offer you the best value option for your specific circumstances, just call 01453 826781 or visit www.gettrained.co.uk

Some confusion exists over this issue but the realities are clearly explained in regulation. In fact, the regulations specify areas where cover may not be refused, for example;
• “any breach of the insurance policy by the employer following the event giving rise to a claim, e.g. failure of, or delay in, notification
• any breach of any enactment by the employer concerning the protection of their employees; or
• failure by the employer to keep records as required by the policy or to provide information from such records for the insurer.
• any lack of reasonable care by the employer to protect employees against the risk of bodily injury or disease”

Other than in extreme cases claims cannot be refused but restrictions can be made, particularly in respect of work which the insurer considers hazardous. The majority of insurers limit the height at which employees may work (still the single biggest cause of workplace deaths) and most also include a standard restriction relating to work with asbestos containing materials (ACM’s). These restrictions can be removed but you will find yourself paying much higher premiums for this privilege.

Restrictions are the key issue here. If you decide to work at height on a project and a restriction exists which you then break it is highly unlikely that the insurer will still have to honour the claim. Make sure you know these restrictions and make sure that your staff and managers know. A one off job or even a favour for a good client could leave you with a very significant bill if restrictions are breached and an accident occurs.

EL cover for micro businesses
If you employ just one person within the business then since February 28th 2005 EL cover has no longer been compulsory. However, consider the following scenario’s in which cover would be needed before cancelling any existing arrangement;
• You hire a part time member of staff to ease your workload over a busy period
• You employ a temp to cover you for a holiday or period of sickness absence
• You get help from volunteer works or work experience students
• You employ a gardener, cleaner or security guard through the business
• You employ an agency worker

Finally always consult with your broker before making any change, failure to meet legal requirements on EL insurance can result in a fine of £2500 per day, over a year this could add up to over £900,000.