more HSE gone mad

[scottishjohn]

my digger man  told me that he now has to have a safety harness  with fall arestment when getting up on back of digger to check oils etc 

not much point he says as the arrestor system don,t lock until its dropped 2 m --which would mean he would be  face down in the mud

 but site he is working on has insisted he  uses fall arrestment gear when getting up on the digger .

 this week he got in trouble again with HSE man on site 

he was holding up traffic and helping concrete trucks back onot the tight site he,s working on 

have you done a traffic management course ?

NO ,then do not help the trucks back on site-

we,ll send you on a course next year ,another 3 days wasted he says 

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by scottishjohn

[Danny68]

Had the same HSE nonsense  once in the Ford Dagenham  I was wrongly  standing on a A frame scaffold  around a pit that was 4ft off the ground to nut some bolts up ,was told to put a harness on, the fact I had nothing to clip to wasn't  apparently  an issue ?.

[nod]

Yep it’s like that everywhere now 

Especially the city centre jobs 

Weekly Scaf tags on 2 ft hop up benches 

Random drug and alcohol tests 

No shorts 

The only thing they don’t seem to be able to is stop us using stilts 

The company that manufactures them has a method statement as long as your arm that seems to satisfy HSE where ever we go 

Which is surprising 

[SteamyTea]

But we kill very few construction workers these days.

My 'bad landlord' neighbour had scaffolding up for 3 weeks, no tag.

He left the old roof tiles and other shit in the neighbour's garden, it is still there after 6 weeks.

So I am all for a bit of HSE.

(I am the mug that deals with it at work. Not really that hard it time consuming, though I do have a well educated and intelligent workforce)

[joe90]

I am not a fan of all this HSE nonsense, I believe in common sense and taking responsibility, not blame culture. Whilst working on a loft conversion the BI turned up just as I put the ladder up to the scaffolding (took it away at night for safety), the  BI climbed the ladder while I was in my van and bollocked me fir not tying the ladder off at the top, I tried to explain that he just saw me put it there and the only way to tie it off was to climb said ladder , he said that was not good enough!!!!!!

[Stewpot]

The idea of HSE, really, is to stop people exploiting the safety of those they employ or have other control of. Things have improved enormously for factory workers, and other labourers in the past 100 years. But that's not what we read about. I reckon much of the HSE stuff we hear about - from the local Round Table not being able to do their annual fireworks display, to the local council insisting upon hard hats being worn when inspecting the pavement - is largely insurance driven. IF something happens, and somebody makes a claim against them, then the insurance won't cover them if they have not followed the terms to the letter.

 

Mean time:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd_FMM8FPAU

 

 

 

[nod]

Some of the things are over kill 

No shorts on site being one 

But much has changed since I started in the building trade 

One thing being scaffolding 

I can remember roofers working without scaffolding on site 

and roof trusses being pulled up two pol ladders 

Frightening when you think about it 

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, Stewpot said:

Mean time:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd_FMM8FPAU

 

 

 

He wasn't wearing a high viz vest.  It would never have happened if he was.

[joe90]

Some things are better.......?

 

[SteamyTea]

28 minutes ago, nod said:

No shorts on site being one 

Probably because women, small children and animals may be upset.

Really, all that is needed, is one rule.

No Dickheads

[Jeremy Harris]

10 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Probably because women, small children and animals may be upset.

Really, all that is needed, is one rule.

No Dickheads

 

 

I keep meaning to buy some of Uncle Bumbef*ck's stickers:

 

 

 

Available from here:  https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/687412636/warning-stickers-mk-ii

 

 

[ProDave]

^^ I am sure I saw a version of that that said it "will hurt like f**k all the time you are dying"

[scottishjohn]

there are some things that i do agree with 

like safety equipment when using a chainsaw --even for a simple job

you get a good arterial bleed and you,ll be dead before you can ring for an ambulance

 but mostly its just common sense and having a few close shaves when young and foolish 

 but a 3 day course to teach you to use a ladder -- which my son  inlaw had to go on to fir new flashiing light bulbs to a police van roof ,when he worked as police mechanic.

as he says he jumps 10 times higher and falls off when going mountain biking 

[Stewpot]

 

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Really, all that is needed, is one rule.

No Dickheads

 

The problem is, that's the one rule that dickheads think doesn't apply to them.

 

But who am I to talk - I hate going up ladders, but have done so many times, and over the years have got away with some real stupidity.

 

Fortunately, I find my fear of ladders, and such like, increases as I get older, so I'm less inclined to go very high on them, and less likely to be stupid[1].

 

[1] Not necessarily in a general sense, of course.

[Jeremy Harris]

19 minutes ago, Stewpot said:

 

 

The problem is, that's the one rule that dickheads think doesn't apply to them.

 

But who am I to talk - I hate going up ladders, but have done so many times, and over the years have got away with some real stupidity.

 

Fortunately, I find my fear of ladders, and such like, increases as I get older, so I'm less inclined to go very high on them, and less likely to be stupid[1].

 

[1] Not necessarily in a general sense, of course.

 

 

The main problem is that health and safety legislation is aimed at everyone, not just those who can actually be trained to work more safely.

 

There are people around who, no matter how much effort is put in to trying to train them to do things safely , will just ignore it and carry on.  Best example I can think of is a friend of mine, left the RAF as a Chief Tech Armourer and got a job in the Middle East as an armaments instructor, working for a well-known ME air force.  He terminated his contract early and came back to the UK, for one reason only; he was expected to train dickheads for whom no amount of training was ever going to enable them to work safely.  The final straw was after he'd spent weeks trying to train a team of armourers to safely load missiles to underwing rails.  There's a sizing procedure that has to be followed to ensure the correct tolerance between the rail and the missile, so it can both be installed safely and will fire away from the rail cleanly at launch.  No matter how many times he tried to train the guys to gauge the rails and missiles to ensure the right fit, they never seemed to get it.  The day he walked away was when he saw one of them using a mallet to force a (live) missile on to a rail, as the fit was too tight.

 

He lost a fair bit of money by walking away, but reckoned that if he'd stayed there for 100 years those guys would never have been able to work safely.  His view was that the bottom line was that they had a very strong, fatalistic, view of when their own lives would end.  The use of the phrase "insha'Allah" is commonplace there, and viewed by many as being a bit like the Cornish word "drekly", but in his view the guys he was training literally viewed it as if they could never be responsible for the time of their own passing, it was literally down to the will of Allah.

[MikeSharp01]

I notice that the larger diggers now have rails round the engine housing so you can clamber over them in safety without a fall arrestor. 

 

Also worth noting that although it all feels like something of a pain the injury and death rates on construction sites is massively less per 100,000 workers than in the states so it must be doing some good. Wonder if this difference will figure in trade negotiations?

[Cpd]

I once did a very detailed risk assessment (in Australia) for working under a helicopter while long lining 1000kg of rocks in bulk bags into a deep canyon that had never had a helicopter operation carried out in it  and as it was a deep canyon did not get wind through it to blow of dead branches (called widow maker’s) with all practical measures in place the risk was HIGH but by providing an emergency response procedure and a whole bunch of other measures to protect the ground crew  I was confident that should something go wrong a medical  response could be provided within a minute or two at the most. The guy representing the government agency  I was working for told me to go away and re do the risk assessment and get it down to medium, I told him that unless he wanted to clear fell the whole canyon of trees (we had multiple drop sites) there was NO way it could be reduced and that the rating HIGH was the correct one. He informed me that I was obviously incapable of carrying out the operation and that his own government team would do there own risk assessment and do the lift ( I had 20 years of experience working below helicopters) he had only been out of university a few years...... needless to say during there operation a big branch came down and broke one of his guys arm and collar bone, was lucky it was not his neck, and no paramedic on site. Fudging the numbers on a risk assessment is a very dangerous thing. 

[billt]

21 hours ago, joe90 said:

Whilst working on a loft conversion the BI turned up just as I put the ladder up to the scaffolding (took it away at night for safety), the  BI climbed the ladder while I was in my van and bollocked me fir not tying the ladder off at the top, I tried to explain that he just saw me put it there and the only way to tie it off was to climb said ladder , he said that was not good enough!!!!!!

 

You should have bollocked him. One of the principles of H&S is that the worker has a share of responsibility for his own safety,  not just the employer. The worker should check that his work area and equipment is safe and not assume that it is. As a trained senior officer he should know that and should have checked the ladder before climbing it. If he'd fallen off he would have had any claim reduced or repudiated by his own contributory negligence.

 

On the whole H & S rules are a good thing, unfortunately there seem to be a few people around who enforce them in an unthinking way.

[scottishjohn]

16 minutes ago, billt said:

One of the principles of H&S is that the worker has a share of responsibility for his own safety,  not just the employer.

I agree with that ,but if there is an accident and it goes to court ,then employer laways gets unrealistically penalised

  REAL EXAMPLE

 a mechanic hits himself on hand with his own hammer and crushes it-off work for months,should have been a few weeks --but strecthed it out to close to a year  --mechanic goes to tribunal to obtain a lump sum

 judgement  75% employers fault --employee 25%

the employer should have made sure the emplyee did not use a hammer with grease on shaft 

the man had 20 years in the trade   .so to my mind if any blame it should have other way round

,but really maybe the mech should not have been on the piss  all weekend

-this was not a large garage that was being sued ,but a very small one-

result this insurance ran away ,due the verdict of tribunal--so he had to find £15K + £5 k court expenses--nearlty put him out of biz--

that was an unreasonable placement of blame  for the accident -,

 

Edited December 22, 2019 by scottishjohn

[joe90]

1 hour ago, billt said:

One of the principles of H&S is that the worker has a share of responsibility for his own safety,  not just the employer.

 

Whole heartily agree. One of the reasons why when I was working as a builder any subbies I got worked as self employed direct to the customer.

[SteamyTea]

I do a few shows each year, so took out insurance.

This covers us in any location and does the normal £5mill cover.

It costs £75 last year. Now considering 50 of that goes to the broker, and there are not that many people doing our dirt if shows compared to say car drivers or companies, it shows that the risk us so low as to not really worth bothering about.

My car insurance has reduced this year.