You might well find the following report of interest if you’re in construction, particularly if you’re CDM Principal Designer. For those of you living in the South-west you might be interested to know that Bristol came second in the list for most enforcement notices issued under CDM 2015 (just behind Hammersmith in London)! We’ve just…
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With fines rising by orders of magnitude and custodial sentences being handed in more cases that ever before, businesses are feeling more exposed to risk from not managing safety effectively. They are also conscious that with uncertainty and costs rising plus a tough market, they need to balance cost against benefit wisely to remain competitive. …
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We’ve now had the first full calendar year of the updated CDM Regulations in place with some very big changes in terms of Clients duties. Some things have changed and designers, architects in the main, have begun to feel the pinch of the regulations. Contractors seem happy to proceed largely on the same basis as…
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The Health and Safety Executive has published its sector plans for the next 3-5 years following the draft it issued in March 2017. This earlier document saw HSE split the areas under its remit into 19 different sections rather than the, until now, traditional two sectors Interestingly, manufacturing has been given a ‘must try harder’…
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This recent case involving a Bristol construction firm highlights two common misconceptions; You have to have an accident to get prosecuted and fined by the HSE; Most inspections come through random HSE visits. This case disproves both of these assumptions. Firstly, the case was prosecuted based on the risk of the breach rather than based…
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Formwork safety continues to be an area in which many sites could improve. There are a range of courses out there which give useful qualification and skills in the management of formwork and falsework risk. A good example of this would be the Temporary Works Supervisor Training Course (TWSTC) available from CITB. For more information…
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HSE often attends sites which have been reported as dangerous by members of the public. In fact, we hear of these visits quite regularly and they can be as a result of genuine concerns or perhaps as a result of noise, dust and other disturbances causes nuisance to neighbours. The case below relates to a…
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Many construction site managers may remember hearing a statistic being talked about on past training courses that one person a month dies just walking past a construction site, it often forms part of the CITB Site Managers Safety Training Course This statistic has been brought tragically to life by an accident which occurred in Hanover…
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We are all used to HSE visiting site and reviewing our arrangements on safety. If these fall below expected standards we typically see Fee for Intervention costs (FFI) and the possibility of the serving of Improvement or even Prohibition notices. What’s unusual is when a HSE Inspection results directly in prosecution. HSE launches several campaigns…
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Both the building owner and the contractor they employed to demolish a structure have received heavy fines following safety failings which led to an uncontrolled collapse onto a high street in November 2013 and the CDM Client fined £160,000. It is a requirement of CDM 2007 (now replaced by CDM 2015) that a construction CDM…
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