Dangers in the Cleaning Industry

While everyone knows that the construction industry is a high risk sector when it comes to health and safety, many seem to forget that cleaning is also filled with daily dangers that need to be managed.  You can find cleaners which are involved in all sectors and each one poses many dangers as the cleaners go through their daily routines which can include cleaning at height and using heavy industrial machinery.

Risk Assessments Need to Be Part of the Cleaning Routine

When carrying out any sort of job, from using a product to clean a stain on the floor or when working on a ladder to clean a window, it is essential to write a workplace risk assessment and make sure all of the workers involved are aware of the contents and how they are expected to work through the processes of the job at hand.

Risk assessments are there to protect people from any harm which could arise from the job. Work can become safer by identifying the problems and providing solutions before any work has begun. It is important to consider the risk assessments as a way of trying to prevent harm to others rather than some of the red tape involved in the legalities of health and safety.

Health and safety consultants can help you by producing risk assessments and providing training in this area. However there are five points to remember when you are working on these assessments:

1. Identify hazards by checking out the area where the work will be conducted and discuss the risks with the health and safety consultants about risks as well as the cleaning staff who will be carrying out the work. Looking online is often useful too and can help you to follow the specific guidance set out for the cleaning industry.

2. Write down the hazards and show how they pose risks and to whom they pose risks.

3. Each of the hazards then needs to have controls written down which are there to help manage them, if applicable. The controls need to be checked for adequacy and if they fail more controls need to be added.

4. Once the controls and hazards have been recorded the information needs to be shared with the staff. It is important to make sure everyone knows what is expected of them and how to carry out the controls designed to manage the risks.

5. A review of the finished risk assessment should be carried out at a regular basis, yearly for example, or when new methods of carrying out the job are introduced.

Common Accidents and Health Risks Found in the Cleaning Industry

Risk assessments help to prevent all sorts of problems for cleaners and therefore are essential. Some of the most frequent problems which happen in this industry include:

• Falls from height
• Manual Handling
• Slips and trips
• Injuries to the body especially the back and arms
• Dermatitis

To discuss workplace risk assessments, training and health and safety services that are available from Veritas Consulting call 0800 1488 677.

Risk Assessments – Are You Doing them Right?

Many businesses are using health and safety consultants to teach them how to perform the required, adequate risk assessments in everyday operations. There are all sorts of occasions in the workplace which demand the use of risk assessments. By failing to perform these vital taks you are putting your employees and possibly the public at risk of harm and opening yourself up to prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive.

Points to Consider When Creating a Risk Assessment

There are several questions you need to ask when creating a risk assessment.  These include looking for potential dangers in the workplace and who is at risk from harm from these dangers.  You will also need to evaluate any risks and come up with ways of controlling these risks, which also includes any controls which are already in place.

The risk assessments will need to be recorded and kept for future reference.  You will also need to frequently review them and make changes when necessary.  The best times to perform a review are when any new changes are brought into the workplace. This may involve new equipment or methods of work which were not previously taken into account. Should any incidents occur it is also wise to go over the assessment and see how similar incidents could have been avoided and so bring in new control measures.

Method Statements

Although method statements are not required by law they are extremely useful when it comes to health and safety in the workplace, especially the construction industry. A method statement is different to risk assessments; the statement states a sequence explaining how the job needs to be carried out to reduce any risks which have been described in the risk assessment. With a method statement you are able to carefully plan any work and make sure you have in place all the resources necessary.

Receive the Proper Training

One of the health and safety services provided by Veritas Consulting involves risk assessments and training.  Although assessments can be performed without professional assistance it is useful to make sure you are fully up to date with all the laws and regulations in your industry, as well as learning how to create adequate assessments and the skills required for method statements.

Health and safety consultants are able to teach you these skills, or perhaps perform the tasks on your behalf. If you are concerned about the strength of your health and safety skills it can be extremely beneficial to use the expertise of health and safety consultants with extensive knowledge and experience in this field.

By making sure that your workplace is safe you can protect your workers and the public from harm. Call 0800 1488 677 to discuss these services in greater detail.  You can show any inspectors that you are doing everything that is feasibly possibly to manage your work environment and reduce the risks faced each day in the workplace. By doing you may be able to potentially avoid prosecution should an incident arise where you can prove you did everything possible to follow the health and safety regulations and laws.

Calls for a Health and Safety Shake Up After Four Miners Lose Their Lives

Four miners working at the Gleision drift mine in Swansea sadly lost their lives on Thursday September 15 after the mine shaft flooded with water.  The Health and Safety Executive are currently investigating the scene trying to establish where the water came from and exactly what went wrong. Health and safety consultants and the miners themselves all know that mining is fraught with danger, but now calls for a complete water risk health and safety overhaul in this industry are coming in.

Although it would be impossible to make mining safe, no matter what the health and safety services and HSE are able to change, it is possible to minimise the water risks by changing the current assessments that are taking place in mines throughout the UK.  As Thursdays tragedy shows more needs to be done in order to protect the miners who risk their lives every time they enter the shafts.

A Full Report into the Incident is expected from the HSE

The Health and Safety Executive and the police are investigating fully and a full report is to be published. It is hoped that this report will identify areas of weakness where the changes can be made. This will be very much like a risk assessment that needs to be carried out in any workplace.  The job of the risk assessments is to identify any problem areas before were has even begun.  By identifying the issues in a risk assessment a plan can be created to overcome these problem areas safely and effectively.

Speaking about the incident at the Gleision mine Dr Wade from The Open University suggested that abandoned mines in the area where miners will be working need to be fully drained before work commences. It has been suggested that a water filled abandoned mine was the cause of the flood in Swansea which resulted in the loss of lives.

The Extensive Mine Shafts in the UK need to be Drained Close to Mines Still in Use

The four men, Garry Jenkins, David Powell, Phillip Hill and Charles Breslin were working along with three other miners when a retaining wall inside the shaft which was holding back the water gave way.  Mining goes back for centuries in the UK, there is a complete maze of abandoned mine shafts all of which will need reviewing if the Health and Safety Executive decide that draining the mines is an essential part of mining risk assessment.

Risk Assessments Are Required in Every Business

Companies in the UK can learn from this incident, even if they are not in the mining industry. The Health and Safety Consultants, Veritas Consulting, help businesses with their risk assessments on a daily basis.  It is essential to try and minimise and control any dangers in any industry, no matter how small the job is.  If you would like to discuss risk assessments or any other health and safety services give the experts a call.  Telephone 0800 1488 677 for more information.

£150,000 fine after Worker has head crushed by reversing lorry

Simon Mason was working late at night at a parcel firm in West Horndon in Essex.  After watching the lorry enter the depot he noticed that the driver had not lined up straight so decided to help the driver by signalling to him.  As he put his head out to shout to the driver the lorry began to reverse.  Mr Mason had his skull crushed and suffered some very serious injuries.

Health and safety consultants know that there are so many dangers in the workplace and that every eventuality needs to be planned for.  This is performed through many different health and safety services such as providing complete training, helping with reporting and producing risk assessments and many other services offered by companies such as Veritas.

Worker Required Hours of Surgery and Constant Care

In this case the investigation that occurred following Mr Masons accident showed that there was a lack of assessments carried out by Tufnells Parcels Express ltd. The movement of vehicles was not controlled and there was no risk management in place to prevent accidents and to keep employees safe.

Mr Mason survived however he did need to go into surgery on several occasions and although he has returned to work he still has some side effects even after months of round the clock care. The effects of his accident are long term and he has suffered due to the failings of the company he worked for.

If Tufnells Parcels Express had created a safe and consistent method of working in their depot the accident may never have happened.  If you own a company and are unsure of your duties regarding health and safety laws and regulations you should constant health and safety services for assistance. In this case the inspectors working on the case discovered that Mr Mason was working in an unsafe environment and the company had failed him and the other workers in the depot by putting their lives at risk.

Chelmsford Crown Court heard about the accident and the discoveries made by the Health and Safety Executive.  The company pleaded guilty so the judge gave them a fine of £150,000 and an additional £19,000 in costs.

Risks Must Be Managed To Prevent Accidents in the Workplace

Veritas are health and safety consultants who provide services to prevent accidents and deaths in the workplace and on construction sites. Vehicles can cause many problems and so their needs to be a high level of attention and risk assessments carried out to keep employees and the public safe.

A health and safety inspector spoke about the high risks involved with vehicle management after the court case in Chelmsford.  It was the duty of the senior management to manage the risks and as they failed to do so a young man was left with awful injuries which could have easily resulted in the loss of life.

To prevent accidents to your employees or the public contact the health and safety consultants.  Call 0800 1488 677 to hear more about the health and safety services available

Risk Assessments are not a bureaucratic burden.

Although under various pieces of UK legislation it is a legal requirement for organisations to record and document the significant findings of risk assessments if they employ five or more people, it makes good commercial sense to record them so that a check can be made that all of the organisation’s activities have been assessed.

It is not unknown, for example, for gaps in risk assessments to be discovered during the implementation of say behavioural safety initiatives, i.e. assessments have been made of engineering tasks in workshops, but not for engineering tasks on a plant.

However, discovery of these gaps can only be achieved if the records are kept. Again, for expediency, it is not unusual for daily permit to work procedures to be used as the only proof of compliance to the risk assessment requirements.

Although the incorporation of on-the-spot risk assessments in permit to work procedures is laudable, these records tend to be discarded after about three months, resulting in the data being lost. Moreover, it is very difficult for such companies to know whether or not they have conducted risk Assessments for all their activities.

This often occurs in those companies which view the requirement for risk assessments as a bureaucratic burden. However, the advantages of keeping such records outweigh the perceived bureaucracy, as they can be used in many ways. For example, they can be used to:

• demonstrate to employees, board members, shareholders and statutory bodies (e.g. HSE) that the organisation is actually identifying, assessing and controlling risks

• identify or reinforce the need for capital expenditure to be allocated to control the risks

• reduce management’s time during periodic reviews of risks

• identify safety training needs

• identify potential unsafe behaviours during the implementation of behavioural safety initiatives.

So what should be documented in a Risk Assessment?

A record of a risk assessment must include details of the measures chosen to eliminate or control the risks, and the reasons for choosing them. The record is focused primarily on the activities taking place, while taking into account any particular situational constraints, the risks posed and the solutions adopted to overcome them.