Man Loses Arm after Accident with Hydraulic Press
A 47 year old employee had his armed crushed by a hydraulic press while working at Helmet Integration Systems Ltd. Due to the severity of James McKay’s injuries he had to have his arm amputated. The hydraulic press was designed by Composite Integration Limited specifically to create fire helmets, as a result of the accident Composite Integration Ltd were prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive.
Safety Gates Failed to Stop the Hydraulic Press
The incident happened in November 2007. Mr McKay was working on a typical night shift operating the press alone. The machine connects two halves of a fire helmet made from fibre glass together, resin is injected into the mould as it is closed together and heated in order to create a finished helmet. While Mr McKay operated the machine one of the moulds slipped out of press. To resolve the problem he opened the safety gate in order to gain access to the mould, believing that the press would automatically stop. The top cavity continued to lower due to gravitational pull which trapped, crushed and burnt Mr McKay’s arm inside the press.
It took ten or fifteen minutes for Mr McKay’s screams for help to be heard. A work colleague pressed the emergency stop button but the machine did not stop, instead the cavity continued to lower and crush the arm further. The only way to stop the machine was to remove the hydraulic hose which stopped the pressure and allowed the fire fighters present to release Mr McKay. A lot of damage to the arm meant Mr McKay needed many operations in order to try and repair the damage, unfortunately after an infection in January 2008 the arm needed to be amputated.
Flaws in the Design of the Press Discovered
The Health and Safety Executive investigated the incident and they found that there were problems in the design of the hydraulic press which had been designed by Composite Hydraulic Ltd. Opening the safety guard should have stopped the machine from functioning, and so should pressing the emergency stop button. There should have been a system in place to make sure that when the machine was stopped using the guard or the button the cavity at the top stopped moving downwards due to gravity.
Due to the poor design of the press Composite Integration Ltd were fined £25,000 when they pleaded guilty at Stranrear Sheriff Court. They breached three sections of the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations which were Sections 11, 12(1) (e) and 29(a) which state that machinery should not be supplied unless it is safe.
Health and Safety Consultants Ready to Help
There are multiple health and safety services available if you are finding it difficult to get your head around health and safety in your place of work. With so many regulations and legislations it can be easy to get too tied up in red tape and miss vital areas. Using health and safety consultants can be useful to ensure you are meeting your duties. Call 0800 1488 677 today to speak directly to health and safety consultants.
Worker Trapped at Leisure Park
An employee at the Dawlish holiday Park, Lady’s Mile Farm, suffered terrible injuries when he became trapped while working in a trench. Grzezgorz Waluszowski had been asked to help with laying one of the drainage pipes in a trench. While he was in the two meter deep trench the sides collapsed trapping him inside.
No Adequate Safety Measures in Place and a Lack of Planning
Other people working on the trench were able to help dig Mr Waluszowski out of the caved in trench however he had fractured his skull, his cheekbone and his jaw. When the Health and Safety Executive paid a visit to the park they discovered that they had good reason to prosecute the operators, Main Gate Leisure. The inspectors discovered that there was no adequate planning in place for the work of laying the new drainage pipe, and no safety measures were in place to prevent the accident from occurring.
Mr Waluszkowski not only worked at the park, he lived there too. On the day of the accident he was working with two of the directors of the park’s operators. In order to try and prevent the trench from caving in some pieces of plywood were propping up a metal plate and some wood was placed between the sides in order to help hold them up. Unfortunately this was not effective and the whole support system collapsed causing the sides to cave in. The directors present used an excavator on site in order to reach Mr Waluszkowski and help to get him out which the managed to do before the emergency services arrived.
Main Gate Leisure Limited was prosecuted at Torquay Magistrates court where they pleaded guilty for breaching Regulation 31(1) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations. The company have to pay a fine of £5,000 and they were also ordered to pay £2,198 in court costs.
After the hearing Jonathan Harris, a Health and Safety Executive spoke to the press. He said that the accident could have easily resulted in a fatality. This highlights the importance of thorough planning and the need to have proper safety measures in place. The support used to prop up the sides of the trench was clearly not suitable; a trench box can be hired with ease and would have prevented the caving in of the trench.
Make Use of a CDM Coordinator
Using the health and safety services offered by specialists is a great way of helping to prevent accidents such as these occurring in your workplace. If you work with health and safety consultants it is possible to make use of CDM Coordinator Services that are able to help companies conform with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007. The experienced consultant will be able to help you in a variety of ways including but not limited to:
- Risk Management
- Administration
- Health and Safety and the Design Process
Call 0800 1488 677 to speak to health and safety consultants about their CDM Coordinator service or one of the many other useful services available.
Getting your message heard and creating a safer environment by focusing on people
“In the final 20 seconds before an accident, paperwork will not leap out from somewhere and stop an unsafe operation. It’s inanimate and doesn’t have the power. We do”
from OUCH! Behavioural safety between the sheets (of paper). G Millard
As someone promoting Health and Safety in your workplace either as Health and Safety Consultants or as an Operational Manager you probably experience several of the following:
- Frustration that people say Health and Safety is top of the agenda, but do stupid things every day which put their own lives and those of others at risk
- Being seen as a policeman or technical person who doesn’t understand the pressures of operational targets
- A lack of incidents on site leading to a false sense of security and people taking their eye off the H&S ball
- H&S targets constantly increasing and more and more pressure to reduce the costs of incidents in a tough market
- Wishing that people would just get a grip and realise how important this really is
Wouldn’t it be great if safety was a natural response for everyone in your organisation and happened throughout their lives, not just at work? And if short term priorities didn’t override the importance of doing the right and safe thing in any situation?
So how can you achieve a situation where safe working hours are steadily increasing and this only focuses people on safety even more?
Many H&S professionals have moved into this role from an operational or technical role. This means that most have had haphazard training at best in skills such as influencing, leadership and change management. Which can mean they are tempted to do one of two things:
Ignore all the people stuff and leave it to others – after all you are in this role
because their technical skills are required by many people across the organisation- Focus on the people aspect almost exclusively – because if you don’t help people understand and buy into the programme then it won’t work anyway!
- Focus on the people aspect almost exclusively – because if you don’t help people understand and buy into the programme then it won’t work anyway!
In this article we’re looking at how to influence people so that safety becomes intrinsic to everything that they do.
People don’t simply do what they are told, they do what they do because of the consequences that result for them when they’ve done it. i.e. If there are problems with safety, it’s because those behaviours are being reinforced – intentionally or otherwise.
The picture to the Left is based on the NLP principles and shows the different levels where you can chose to interact with people. The bottom 3 rungs of the ladder are related to the things they do every day, where they work, the job that they do and the skills that they use to do it well.
The top 3 rungs are the reasons they do what they do and this is where we need to focus to influence people. Taking an example of someone who rushes that last task of the day, so that they can get home to see their son in the school play – generally they don’t do things in a slap dash way because they don’t know how to do it – they do it because of the consequences for them in their life of being late home. And the consequences of being late home are much more immediate for them than the consequences of an accident, which they think is unlikely to happen. So their mind is influenced by their values and beliefs, not their knowledge and skills.
Most H&S programmes are designed to change how people behave in certain situations where there is an element of risk. But research shows that It takes about 18 months of changes behaviour to influence our beliefs and values. Influencing beliefs and values has a much quicker impact on behaviour.
So how can you do this:
Ask people to tell you what the consequences of taking a specific risk might be – by asking them you are forcing them to think through what might happen and visualise a real situation with them in it.
Find out why they are doing it the way they are at the moment - exploring what drives them to do things the “wrong” way can help you to find the key to unlock their resistance to doing it the safe way.
Build relationships with people and find out what pressures they have in their lives, so that you can tailor a solution to that works for them
Ask them how to make it safer - often people have ideas and suggestions for what can be done, but they either don’t think to tell you or they’ve “stuck their head above the parapet too many times before and are worried they’ll get shot”
Back up these conversations with logical, factual information which gives them the data to back up your discussions.
By engaging with people as human beings and spending time to listen rather than talk “at” them, you will see a change in their attitudes to both Health and Safety and you as the expert in this area.
Our guest blogger today is Louise Ebrey. Louise facilitates effective change and supports Internal Consultants, Specialists and Advisors to reach their potential and achieve even better results for their organisations. She is a facilitator, coach, and implementer of Business Improvement solutions which align process improvement with business strategy. Her approach combines her extensive experience in Business Improvement and Lean, with NLP, strategic change and people development.
Originally an Engineer, Louise has been facilitating effective ways of working for the last 10 years. She focuses on the strategy and culture required to ensure success.
She recently co-founded the Great Insiders tribe where Internal Consultants, specialists and advisors (such as H&S professionals) can meet, share experience, learn from each other and hear from expert speakers. www.greatinsiders.com/great-insiders
You can contact Louise at louise.ebrey@bridgewaterlatitude.com
Health and Safety and the Small Builder
If you are a small builder there are laws in place to ensure that you carry out work in a safe manner. As a small builder you will be undertaking jobs such as private projects in domestic and business settings. When working in domestic properties you have the sole responsibility when it comes to ensuring health and safety on site. When working in business premises the responsibilities lie with both you and the client.
Be Aware of Your Legal Responsibilities
As a small building you are required by law to:
- Manage the risks and the hazards onsite.
It is your duty to carefully create plans to follow, manage the plans and monitor all of the construction work in a way that ensure there are no risks for you or your employees. One of the ways you can achieve this through creating risk assessments and ensuring they are followed.
Small builders must follow the CDM regulations and therefore it is necessary to always arrange facilities for your workers, stop unauthorised access to the site, set lead times for any sub-contractors and also plan, monitor and manage the construction work in order to control the risks to health and safety.
- Train your employees.
It is important to provide accurate information and detailed training to all of your employees. Make them aware of all of the precautions in place, rules that must be followed and safe methods of work.
When you take on new employees or contractors carry out an induction to the site, discuss the risks and the precautions in place to overcome the risks that have been identifies, inform the employees of the rules on site and give information regarding emergency procedures. Always ensure each employee is trained to work for each job they are assigned.
- Be cooperative with the owner of the home you are working in and the business client.
If you are working in a business property you must respect that the client also has legal duties that need to be followed. Make sure that you comply with these and also in domestic settings you will need to communicate your responsibilities surrounding the health and safety of the site while work is being completed.
Be Aware
It is worth noting that the most common cause of death in the construction industry comes from falls from height while other fatalities are often caused by lifting, electricity, mobile planes and collapses of excavations. If you are not able to carry out certain areas of work due to lack of training or licensing it is vital that you do not go ahead with the work.
Health and safety training, risks assessments, method statements and health and safety policies are just some of the health and safety services available to small builders and the construction industry. To ensure you are following the law and managing a safe working environment that minimises risks to everyone it is worth contacting health and safety consultants. You can do this by calling 0800 1488 677 and asking about the construction services which are currently available.
Health and Safety Law and You
It is common knowledge that employees need to do all that is possible to help create a safe and healthy working environment for their employees. What may not be as commonly known is the fact that workers are also responsible for their own health and safety and must help their employees to reduce the risks. Workers must ensure their actions do not put themselves or those around them at risk and help everyone meet the legal requirements set out to keep everyone safe.
The first way to help everyone is by talking to your employers about any concerns you may have or questions regarding the health and safety in your workplace. By communicating it is possible to highlight new problems, prevent accidents and work together to ensure all is being monitored and maintain for the good of everyone.
The Duties of Employees in the Work Place
It is important to be aware of what you must do to help with the health and safety in the place that you work. When you first start at the job, or are given a new position or role you should be given training. It is your duty to follow the training which is given to you and not introduce new methods which you may feel are more convenient. Your other duties include:
- Take care of your own health and safety and the other people’s around you
- Follow the guidance and cooperate with your employees and managers
- Make your managers or employers aware of any risks which may be concerning you or procedures you are unhappy with due to inadequacy apprehensions.
- After bringing up any problems with your employers which are not addressed to your satisfaction you can contact your local enforcing authority for health and safety and also the Employment Medical Advisory Service.
Your Employer Must Also Do Things for You
- Provide health and safety training free of charge to you
- Provide adequate equipment and clothing free of charge
- Carry out risk assessments and decide what parts of your duties could pose harm and also work out how to prevent accidents or problems concerning your health from occurring through methods of work.
- Ensure there are adequate toilets, washing facilities as fresh drinking water
- There must be adequate first aid facilities available
- Have insurance which will cover you if you fall ill from work or are injured. A copy of the insurance certificate should be placed where you can view it
- Talk and discuss your health and safety with you and health and safety representatives
- Explain the risks that you face, explain how they are controlled and who is responsible for controlling them
- Work closely with all other contractors or employers in the same workplace to ensure health and safety in the workplace is protecting everyone
By working together it is possible to help prevent accidents and create a good environment to work in. Both employees and employers need to know their responsibilities and unite when it comes to preventing injury and poor health at work. Contact health and Safety consultants to find out more about health and safety services and laws. Call 0800 1488 677 to find out more.
11,000 Volt Cable Cut by Accident Results in Serious Burns
A Worcestershire demolition worker was burnt terribly when he accidently cut through a live wire who was carrying 11,000 volts at an electricity substation. DSM Demolition and Gould Singleton Architects were both investigated after the incident when the Health and Safety Executive arrived to determine what had happened. As a result they were taken to court and subsequently fined for breaching various sections of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
The Electrics Were Not Checked Before Work Began
Lee Harris was working for DSM who had been hired to demolish a metal casting foundry in Worcester. Mr Harris was told to cut through a cable using a machine, unfortunately the cable was still connected to a substation and was live at the time. As the machine made contact with the wire Mr Harris was engulfed in flames. He suffered 20% burns to his body and has had to endure pain, skin grafts and learn to love with permanent disabilities. A simple error changed a man’s life forever and could have easily resulted in the loss of life.
When the Health and Safety Executive investigated the incident they discovered that neither of the two firms had made sure that the electrics on the site had been disconnected. Gould Singleton Architects had been informed by DSM that the site was no longer connected to the electrics, but DSM did not check to see if this was the case before they began working on demolishing the site.
Huge Fines for Failing to Follow the Health and Safety at Work Act
Both of the companies were prosecuted at Worcester Crown Court. DSM failed to follow section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act and found guilty at the court. They were ordered to pay court costs of £100,000 and fined £40,000. Gould Singleton Architects pleaded guilty for breaching Section 3(1) of the same act and also Regulation 15 (3) (e) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations. They were ordered to pay costs of £20,872 and were fined £20,000.
Safe Systems of Work Required in the Construction Industry
It is vital that all companies involved in building or demolition ensure that the correct checks are carried out before any work commences on site. During this time it is also important to have good communications between all of the companies involved in the work on site.
Health and Safety consultants can help you with many different aspects of safety in the construction industry. The HSE will prosecute any company found to be breaching the regulations stated in the Health and Safety at Work Act or the Construction Design and Management Regulations. To prevent this from happening and to ensure you are doing everything possible to prevent accidents or risk the health of your workers you can undertake the services of consultants.
Use the health and safety services available to reduce the risks. There are many available including training, fire risk assessments, health and safety files and more. To find out more about these services contact the experts on 0800 1488 677 today.
Horse Trainer Fined After Worker Fell Through Skylight
Alan Swinbank, a well-known and respected racing stables owner based in North Yorkshire has been prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive after one of his workers suffered injuries at the yard. The employee working at Thorndale Farm fell more than three meters when working on a stable block at the farm. Alan Swinbank had requested Paul Cussons to prepare for some renovation work on an old stable block and cut back some of the overhanging branches from trees overhead.
Nasty Injuries Incurred Because of Fall
Paul Cussons took a chainsaw and climbed onto the stable block roof. Unfortunately while using the chainsaw Mr Cussons fell through a skylight after slipping on some leaves on the roof. Mr Cussons fell onto the concrete floor inside the stable block and broke his shoulder blades, fractured one rib and also suffered a punctured lung from the fall.
The Health and Safety Executive investigated the incident and die to their findings they decided to hand out two Prohibition Notices to Mr Swinbank. The Prohibition notices were ordering Mr Swinbank to cease any further work activities involving the chainsaw and also prohibiting any further work at height being undertaken.
Court Hearing Heard About Long Term Suffering of Mr Cussons
Despite the hearing taking place 16 months after the incident back in July 2010, the court heard that Mr Cussons was still suffering due to his extensive injuries. He had still not been able to return to work at the stable yard where he had been employed for 26 years before the incident. During those 26 years he had spent the first 16 years as a driver and the remaining 10 years working on maintaining the stable yard, grass areas and the gallops at Thorndale Farm.
The court fined Mr Swinbank £10,000 the horse trainer was also made to pay £6,048 in costs after pleading guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act.
High Risks Not Acceptable
The Health and Safety Executive inspector told the press that Mr Cussons had been placed at high risk by his employer. The worker was lucky not to have been killed in the incident and it was very unfortunate that he was still suffering from the injuries and the awful experience of the fall. The investigations on the farm showed that Mr Cussons had worked with a chainsaw on the farm for many years despite having never received the proper training or having access to the correct safety equipment. As a result Mr Cussons should have never been given the chainsaw or asked to carry out jobs on the farm with it.
Training was also an issue when it came to performing jobs working at height. Falls from height are very common and cause multiple injuries and the loss of lives in work place accidents. Mr Cussons had never been given the correct training for working at height and also had no idea of how to plan in advance to ensure the task at hand would be carried out with minimal risks.
Health and Safety Consultants Can Help With Training and Planning
If you require training for yourself, your managers or workers you can contact the Health and Safety consultants and ask about their training packages. Call 0800 1488 677 and ask about the current health and safety services which are available.
