Has Health and Safety Taken a Step Too Far?
Alison Hume’s Life Could Have Been Saved. Has Health and Safety Taken a Step Too Far?
In the news last week there was the story about the tragic and preventable death of Alison Hume who dies in July 2008. The 44 year old mother fell down and old mineshaft on Galston while walking home and was found by her daughter who called for help. Ms Hume suffered a collapsed lung, broken ribs and sternum. However it has been found that Ms Hume would have most likely survived these injuries had there not been a delay in bringing her up to the surface.
Health and Safety Regulations Cost a Woman Her Life
The senior officer in charge of the rescue operation would not use the equipment needed to winch out Ms Hume in time to help treat her. The fire fighters present were willing to go down and help her but due to the senior officer following the health and safety guidelines Ms Hume remained down in the mineshaft for six more hours. When they finally rescued her she died from a heart attack which was brought on by hypothermia.
The equipment needed to rescue the 44 year old mother was only to be used to help the rescuers and the regulations surrounding its use stated that it should not be used for the public. The officer would not move from these regulations and the inquiry has now discovered that the death could have been avoided of it wasn’t for the delay due to the health and safety regulations.
Lack of Training Also a Contributing Factor?
The inquiry also showed that the Strathclyde Police and Fire and Rescue workers did not have adequate knowledge of the resources that they had available to them in order to aid the rescue of Ms Holmes. They were not familiar with the potential uses of the equipment and did not understand how it could have been used. There was also a lack of training among the emergency services and the fire crews did not have an advanced knowledge of first aid.
Health and Safety Is Necessary
There has been a public outcry and now demands are being made that there should be a get out clause in some of the laws and regulations, such as those which stopped the senior officer from using certain equipment to save Ms Hume.
Health and safety consultants would like to remind people that regulations are there to protect lives, and without the regulations more people each year would die due to inadequate safety measures in the workplace, especially in industries such as agriculture and construction where in the past adults and children have lost their loves from being exposed to asbestos, mercury and having to operate extremely dangerous equipment.
Knowledge and Education
The correct training is always an important part of running any business. Health and safety services are able to provide in depth training courses to help increase knowledge and prevent terrible accidents leading to tragic losses of lives. To discuss the type of training which could benefit you or your employees contact the health and safety consultants at Veritas. Call 0800 1488 677 for further
CDM Designers Risk Register
A CDM Designers Risk Register is to be regarded as a management tool for the identification and elimination/reduction of hazards and risks associated with the de project. The Designers Risk register can be used to create a single document where all significant design risks can be identified, collated, monitored and ultimately reduced as part of the design process. At the end of the design process, the register will provide an audit trail of design decisions.
All CDM designers are required to analyse their designs as they develop and identify any significant hazards associated with them. As significant hazards are identified they will be added to the risk register and the relevant actions taken to reduce or eliminate the associated risks will be recorded.
As each significant hazard is reduced to its lowest practicable level, the remaining hazard and any identified control measures will be logged and subsequently communicated to Contractors via the Pre-Construction Health and Safety Information and to the end user by the Health and Safety File.
Click here to request a Designers Risk Register template
CDM Designers Risk Register its Purpose and Approach
This process describes how H&S, and when appropriate environmental issues, are taken into account as an integral part of the design process for construction projects, so that:
where reasonably practicable, design measures are taken to avoid or eliminate identified risks
details of significant residual risks are communicated at the appropriate time to those who need to know progress and outputs are monitored and reviewed compliance with the CDM Regulations can be demonstrated and is auditable
Here is how to use a Designers Risk Register
List the construction activities comprising the design package or project element.
Identify the hazards and associated harmful events for each activity, package or element.
Assess the identified risks (pre-design) – Assume no design mitigations or site controls are in place when assessing the risk.
The CDM designer must always look for opportunities to avoid or mitigate risks even when the risks are considered to be normal to the type of work. Many such risks still have a high associated incident/accident rate despite being ‘well known’
A simple qualitative assessment of High, Medium or Low is all that is needed. A H/H assessment indicates a very high priority for the design to be altered. At the other end of the scale a L/L result indicates a low priority for an alteration.
Health and Safety Design Assumptions.
Record any assumptions critical to the design risk control measures taken and outline the controls that others will need to implement to ensure safe working
Information/assumptions critical to safety must be recorded, eg requirements for stability before structure/installation is complete.
The data captured is more to show that the contractor has not been left with an impossible problem and that provision has been made for a safe system of work, than it is to tell the contractor what to do in detail.
In practice there may be instances where there is ‘no reasonably practicable’ design measure that can be adopted to avoid, or reduce an identified risk (if this is the case then this is noted in the CDM Design risk register). However, it is not permitted to pass on a risk that cannot be controlled by site/implementation measures during construction or subsequent cleaning or maintenance etc.
Significant Residual Risk
Review risks (post design) and identify ‘significant residual risks’ for communication to those who need to know.
The significance of a residual risk depends on whether it is reasonable to assume that a competent contractor would expect to encounter the hazard. Eg ‘work at height’ is likely to stay a high ‘severity’ risk but will not necessarily need to be highlighted in the Plan. On the other hand a risk that has a low likelihood/severity will still need to be communicated if the contractor is likely to be unaware of it, such as when the risk is site- or project-specific or the risk is likely to be difficult to manage in practice.
If a risk has been reduced to as low a level as reasonably practicable and the residual risk is not significant then the risk can be closed-out in the risk register.
Residual risks may also be highlighted in the register in order to signify their status and highlight those requiring particular attention by contractors. For example, a residual risk that is ‘significant’ (ie unusal, unexpected, adbnormal or difficult) but which can nevertheless be controlled on site by standard best practice, such as method statements, permits etc is highlighted as Blue.
A significant residual risk that will require particular attention over and above standard best practice is highlighted in say red. ‘Non-significant’ risks should not be highlighted, eg in say green, because to do so might imply that no site controls etc are required. This may not necessarily be the case if the risk, such as ‘work at height’, although usual and expected is still a major hazard requiring proper site controls.
Note – Do not rely upon measures that will be taken on site to control hazards, always seek to alter the design.
CDM Designers Competence
It is assumed that all CDM Designers are familiar with:
their duties under the CDM Regulations
the principles of design risk assessment/management
relevant construction/maintenance processes and associated H&S risks
Click here to request a Designers Risk Register template
For a CDM Designers Risk Register Template please contact us
Construction Design and Management Regulations Presentation
Contractors Role and the CDM Regulations
Duties of Contractors
What Contractors must do for all Projects (Part 2 of the CDM Regulations)
Contractors must ensure:
- Clients are aware of their duties.
- Not start work until they have obtained the pre-construction information from the client (or PC).
- Plan, manage and monitor their own work to make sure that their workers are safe.
- Ensure they and those they appoint are competent and adequately resourced.
- Inform any contractor they engage, of the minimum time they have for planning & preparation.
- Provide workers (employed or self-employed) with any necessary information, training & induction.
- Report anything that they are aware of that is likely to endanger the H&S of themselves or others.
- Ensure that any design work they do complies with CDM design duties.
- Comply with the duties for site health and safety.
- Co-operate and co-ordinate with others working on the project.
- Consult the workforce.
- Not begin work unless they have taken reasonable steps to prevent unauthorised access to the site.
- Obtain specialist advice (e.g. from a structural engineer or occupational hygienist) where necessary.
Principal Contractors Role
Are you a Client and need construction work done? well the CDM Regulations 2007 provide for a number of duty holders involved within the construction industry one of which is the Principal Contractor which a client must appoint for all notifiable construction work and appoint as soon as is practicable.
What Principal Contractors must do for all Notifiable Projects
(Part 3 of the CDM Regulations)
Principal Contractors must ensure:
- That client is aware of duties, CDM Coordinator has been appointed and HSE notified.
- Those they appoint are competent.
- The construction phase is properly planned, managed, monitored and resourced.
- Inform contractors of the minimum time allowed for planning and preparation.
- Provide relevant information to contractors.
- Ensure safe working, coordination and co-operation between contractors.
- Construction phase health and safety plan is prepared and implemented.
CDM Coordinator Guide
The Association for project safety (APS) have produced a a very useful publication ” The Guide to the Management of CDM Coordination” which follows the same style and format as the original guide for Planning Supervisors under the old CDM regulations 1994 but it has been mapped against the new CDM Regulations 2007 and ACOP (approved code of practice, brought sharply up-to-date and covers the issues that a CDM Coordinator need to take into account.
Where as most CDM related publications on the market today explain what the regulations are about and how they should work – the APS CDM – C Guide covers how they can be made to work and what may need to be done to ensure that various duties are discharged.
The CDM Coordinator guide also provides some guidance on what to do when all is going to plan, when others are not doing what they are supposed to do and when the project or process is not quite as clear cut as the regulations assume!
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