Health and Safety, how's your H&S game?
Discussion
I wasn't allowed to unload a lorry on a site because the hard hat I had on was the wrong colour, it was in date and almost new but was yellow, apparently yellow was for supervisors on the site and not minions, who wore white.
It was a paperwork fest anyway because I had a lorry mounted crane and had to lift the large and complicated preformed concrete ring off and into position but after all the hoop jumping we had done to comply including a 45 minute site induction, new ppe and buying brand new straps and lifter knuckles for the actual lift I threatened to leave with the delivery and refused to go in for any more daftness, they soon decided that I was a supervisor as I was a crane operator and therefore in charge of the lift.
The company then took around 8 months to pay. We were concerned they were going to phoenix and simply not pay.
It was a paperwork fest anyway because I had a lorry mounted crane and had to lift the large and complicated preformed concrete ring off and into position but after all the hoop jumping we had done to comply including a 45 minute site induction, new ppe and buying brand new straps and lifter knuckles for the actual lift I threatened to leave with the delivery and refused to go in for any more daftness, they soon decided that I was a supervisor as I was a crane operator and therefore in charge of the lift.
The company then took around 8 months to pay. We were concerned they were going to phoenix and simply not pay.
CanAm said:
Someone posted on here years ago that they had been reprimanded by the office H&S person for walking down the stairs without holding the handrail.
You have a problem with that? Because thems the rules in our UK office.Tango13 said:
We were shown a video by a burns victim called Charlie Morecraft, that was a sobering hour or so.
Yes seen him, a very powerful speaker.I’ve been working construction for far too long. But I can say the improvement in HSE is vast in that period. I worked on the Channel Tunnel for a couple of years in the undersea tunnels. HSE was just about non-existent. Yes hard hats, hi-vis & steel capped boots were worn but that was about it. The lack of any safety culture cost lives. The first was an 18yr old kid. Barely out of school, no construction awareness or experience. Turned up late for his shift, missed his crew train down to the face, so walked down wearing a Walkman listening to his music. Never heard the train that ran him down & killed him.
The interesting thing is the areas that have the greatest struggle with safety culture is the older more experienced guys. They are the very epitome of survivorship bias.
Edited by GT03ROB on Sunday 4th February 09:55
JMGS4 said:
J4CKO said:
So, has it gone mad, or is it for our own good ?
Yes, gone absolutely bonkers... I've friends who are archeologists. Imagine sitting in the middle of a field in middle England, miles from nowhere, no diggers or any earth-moving eqpt. within 3 miles, 30°+ heat, excavation depth no more than1 foot, and have to wear... steel capped boots, helmet, full orange reflective jumpsuit, flame retardant naturally, etc etc.... Needless to say heat exhaustion was present...
as well as a busybody H&S twerp who arrived to check on the H&S issues.......
Naturally not bothered at all that 3 people had heat exhaustion.... must abide by the rules as... "Rules Is Rules" F'ing idiocy!!!!
GT03ROB said:
CanAm said:
Someone posted on here years ago that they had been reprimanded by the office H&S person for walking down the stairs without holding the handrail.
You have a problem with that? Because thems the rules in our UK office.Getragdogleg said:
I wasn't allowed to unload a lorry on a site because the hard hat I had on was the wrong colour, it was in date and almost new but was yellow, apparently yellow was for supervisors on the site and not minions, who wore white.
Used to be the same st at Netto, South Elmsall. Yellow hi-viz only for managers and supervisors. You had to wear one of their red ones on site as a supplier delivery driver. Thankfully I managed to get myself perma-banned from there by not putting my self-unloaded pallets into their warehouse in a perfectly straight line so that they could get their 3 pallet carrier truck underneath them. Apparently, asking the staff at the goods-in desk how much they were going to pay me for being their warehouse labourer was "abuse" and I was escorted off site. Lady Karma has sorted that one out though, as now they're all out of work and the company no longer exists.As far as personal H&S goes, I generally wing it after applying a dose of common sense and ensuring brain is engaged before commencing. One thing I do take seriously now is eye protection. Had many a close call over the years from chiseling/cutting stone/wood or using an angle grinder and it's only through pure luck that I haven't lost an eyeball from the shards. I've never bothered with hard hats or masks unless I've been forced to as part of my job - they're always more of a hindrance than a help.
r3g said:
Getragdogleg said:
I wasn't allowed to unload a lorry on a site because the hard hat I had on was the wrong colour, it was in date and almost new but was yellow, apparently yellow was for supervisors on the site and not minions, who wore white.
Used to be the same st at Netto, South Elmsall. Yellow hi-viz only for managers and supervisors. You had to wear one of their red ones on site as a supplier delivery driver. Thankfully I managed to get myself perma-banned from there by not putting my self-unloaded pallets into their warehouse in a perfectly straight line so that they could get their 3 pallet carrier truck underneath them. Apparently, asking the staff at the goods-in desk how much they were going to pay me for being their warehouse labourer was "abuse" and I was escorted off site. Lady Karma has sorted that one out though, as now they're all out of work and the company no longer exists.As far as personal H&S goes, I generally wing it after applying a dose of common sense and ensuring brain is engaged before commencing. One thing I do take seriously now is eye protection. Had many a close call over the years from chiseling/cutting stone/wood or using an angle grinder and it's only through pure luck that I haven't lost an eyeball from the shards. I've never bothered with hard hats or masks unless I've been forced to as part of my job - they're always more of a hindrance than a help.
Or the time I went to a site with one lift on the flat bed and upon arrival they pushed big bag cushion things right up to the lorry, again I could not get near to unstrap, apparently I was supposed to unstrap on the road and drive in with it just on the lorry by gravity. The H&S pillock on that site could not grasp how I was not wanting to drive with an insecure load onto site.
I did get a nice new set of Hi Viz stuff on a site that reckoned mine was not Hi Viz enough.
Been years since I went out and about unless its a total emergency, im sure its got worse out there.
As a general rule i protect my eyes and lungs. gloves if I can be arsed. the rest is safety by having a suspicious eye and cynical realism as to what will go wrong and making sure I am out of the way if it could break.
There are lots of examples of young lads having nasty accidents because they lack the experience to see the danger, its a fine line between over sanitising stuff so no-one builds this experience and sensible H&S policy that is there to point out what will go wrong if you give it a chance.
The post accident quote of "there wasn't a sign to say not to do it" can be a fine example of this, especially if its something really basic like hot water was too hot or the knife was sharp.
Edited by Getragdogleg on Sunday 4th February 14:46
After losing two mates who took short cuts between moving trains I'm hyper aware at work, a sixth sense sets in but then so can complacency sometimes. A couple of years ago I was on an engineering job at Bletchley climbing down off a loco onto the ballast, but in my haste to get home I didn't account for the great big hole where the adjacent sleepers had been dug out during the night, I jumped off the bottom step in true Neil Armstrong fashion and landed on my back, a lot further down than I was expecting, looking straight up at the stars. Luckily I had my kit bag slung over my shoulder which softened the blow a bit, but it winded me and the next day I got myself checked out and found I'd cracked two ribs. Silly me, won't do that again!
We get drug and alcohol tested at random so have to be very, very careful about supping the old falling down water on our days off. It's just not worth the risk these days (drinking on duty was very common in BR days) but sadly the very occasional transgression does still happen - a few years ago a guy came to our depot for an interview and the guvnor could smell whisky on his breath, so that was the end of that.
We get drug and alcohol tested at random so have to be very, very careful about supping the old falling down water on our days off. It's just not worth the risk these days (drinking on duty was very common in BR days) but sadly the very occasional transgression does still happen - a few years ago a guy came to our depot for an interview and the guvnor could smell whisky on his breath, so that was the end of that.
Getragdogleg said:
As a general rule i protect my eyes and lungs. gloves if I can be arsed. the rest is safety by having a suspicious eye and cynical realism as to what will go wrong and making sure I am out of the way if it could break.
I remember reading a news article in my early days of truck-steering about a guy with a box trailer who'd stopped short of fully reversing onto a dock to go speak with the warehouse people through the open doorway. For whatever reason, the truck started rolling down the slope with nobody in it and he was crushed to the thickness of a sheet of A4 between the trailer bed metal cross member and the metal dock leveller plate. Unsurprisingly, he didn't survive. It's stuck with me ever since and I've always been scared witless of going behind any trailer on a downward slope when it's only been a short distance to something solid, eg. most loading bays. You see drivers only leaving themselves about a 6ft gap, just enough to swing the doors open or closed, or get the reg plate, but I'd always do them on the flat in the middle of the yard before even starting reversing down the slope, and likewise when pulling off the dock. I can't even begin to imagine the pain of having your rib cage crushed into tiny bone fragments from 20-44 tonne of truck & trailer pressing against it .I've worked in a H&S role for nearly 24 years now and most of the laws, regulations and approved codes of practice are just good sound advice but H&S seems to be more about protecting the employer from being sued if an employee does something daft that is it about protecting their workers.
After a very serious accident at the last place I worked it was decided that H&S needed a shake up. Consultant hired to tell us how ste we were at H&S, apart from that difficult to see what his contribution was.
The guys that were chosen to lead the new H&S regime were the guys who had the accident. Their work was extremely dangerous so needed to be done in a very carefully controlled way, not the slap dash amateur way they approached the work. This had been pointed out to the bosses before the accident. We were told to shut up and keep it to ourselves if we were interviewed by the H&S exec. I wasn't interviewed but several who were didn't keep quite, quiet rightly, the result being a well deserved hefty fine.
This fine could have been even bigger if it wasn't for a small group of lower rank staff who had made efforts with H&S with absolutely zero encouragement and back up from the senior staff.
To be fair, H&S needed a shake up but to have it lead by the guys who nearly killed themselves was hard to take. They found it difficult to get staff to cooperate and gradually got eased out of the work. The rest of us found we were not very far from were we should have been with the H&S stuff, rather satisfying in the end.
The guys that were chosen to lead the new H&S regime were the guys who had the accident. Their work was extremely dangerous so needed to be done in a very carefully controlled way, not the slap dash amateur way they approached the work. This had been pointed out to the bosses before the accident. We were told to shut up and keep it to ourselves if we were interviewed by the H&S exec. I wasn't interviewed but several who were didn't keep quite, quiet rightly, the result being a well deserved hefty fine.
This fine could have been even bigger if it wasn't for a small group of lower rank staff who had made efforts with H&S with absolutely zero encouragement and back up from the senior staff.
To be fair, H&S needed a shake up but to have it lead by the guys who nearly killed themselves was hard to take. They found it difficult to get staff to cooperate and gradually got eased out of the work. The rest of us found we were not very far from were we should have been with the H&S stuff, rather satisfying in the end.
r3g said:
Getragdogleg said:
As a general rule i protect my eyes and lungs. gloves if I can be arsed. the rest is safety by having a suspicious eye and cynical realism as to what will go wrong and making sure I am out of the way if it could break.
I remember reading a news article in my early days of truck-steering about a guy with a box trailer who'd stopped short of fully reversing onto a dock to go speak with the warehouse people through the open doorway. For whatever reason, the truck started rolling down the slope with nobody in it and he was crushed to the thickness of a sheet of A4 between the trailer bed metal cross member and the metal dock leveller plate. Unsurprisingly, he didn't survive. It's stuck with me ever since and I've always been scared witless of going behind any trailer on a downward slope when it's only been a short distance to something solid, eg. most loading bays. You see drivers only leaving themselves about a 6ft gap, just enough to swing the doors open or closed, or get the reg plate, but I'd always do them on the flat in the middle of the yard before even starting reversing down the slope, and likewise when pulling off the dock. I can't even begin to imagine the pain of having your rib cage crushed into tiny bone fragments from 20-44 tonne of truck & trailer pressing against it .Looking back at it now I think the front had landed and the back still had tension on the chains, so it was down, looked down but the back was up an inch or so because of the way the guys yard sloped. I was stood at the front and because it looked down and flat I walked between the container and the lorry just as the friction holding it still decided to give up. Its stopped moving when the back end touched down, around a foot of movement in all. just enough to hurt and send me a warning.
I always check all 4 chains are slack if im moving them in the yard now.
Funny how the warnings teach you more than all the H&S inductions could.
Getragdogleg said:
r3g said:
Getragdogleg said:
As a general rule i protect my eyes and lungs. gloves if I can be arsed. the rest is safety by having a suspicious eye and cynical realism as to what will go wrong and making sure I am out of the way if it could break.
I remember reading a news article in my early days of truck-steering about a guy with a box trailer who'd stopped short of fully reversing onto a dock to go speak with the warehouse people through the open doorway. For whatever reason, the truck started rolling down the slope with nobody in it and he was crushed to the thickness of a sheet of A4 between the trailer bed metal cross member and the metal dock leveller plate. Unsurprisingly, he didn't survive. It's stuck with me ever since and I've always been scared witless of going behind any trailer on a downward slope when it's only been a short distance to something solid, eg. most loading bays. You see drivers only leaving themselves about a 6ft gap, just enough to swing the doors open or closed, or get the reg plate, but I'd always do them on the flat in the middle of the yard before even starting reversing down the slope, and likewise when pulling off the dock. I can't even begin to imagine the pain of having your rib cage crushed into tiny bone fragments from 20-44 tonne of truck & trailer pressing against it .Looking back at it now I think the front had landed and the back still had tension on the chains, so it was down, looked down but the back was up an inch or so because of the way the guys yard sloped. I was stood at the front and because it looked down and flat I walked between the container and the lorry just as the friction holding it still decided to give up. Its stopped moving when the back end touched down, around a foot of movement in all. just enough to hurt and send me a warning.
I always check all 4 chains are slack if im moving them in the yard now.
Funny how the warnings teach you more than all the H&S inductions could.
I'm an old man who's spent all his working life sat at a desk. So many of my colleagues are in poor health because they haven't got up and moved on a regular basis.
The only time anyone has yelled at me at work over H&S was the H&S manager at one site I was contracting at. He spent almost 20 minutes shouting at me, with about fifty people in the open plan office trying not to laugh.
My crime? using poor technique to lift a heavy item. The fact that I was twiddling the heavy weight between thumb and forefinger for the entire duration of his rant seemed lost on him until someone else pointed it out
The only time anyone has yelled at me at work over H&S was the H&S manager at one site I was contracting at. He spent almost 20 minutes shouting at me, with about fifty people in the open plan office trying not to laugh.
My crime? using poor technique to lift a heavy item. The fact that I was twiddling the heavy weight between thumb and forefinger for the entire duration of his rant seemed lost on him until someone else pointed it out
oobster said:
I've worked in a H&S role for nearly 24 years now and most of the laws, regulations and approved codes of practice are just good sound advice but H&S seems to be more about protecting the employer from being sued if an employee does something daft than is it about protecting their workers.
That's exactly what it is. As trucker dogleg said above, the requirements to unstrap/strap your load off their property out on the main road perfectly demonstrates this. I've had it myself when I did heavy haulage. I was moving a massive Liebherr crane arm section to a new site and they refused to let me unchain it where it was to be lifted and said I had to unchain it off-site and then drive slowly across something that closely resembled the surface of the moon with approx 30 tonne and half a million pounds worth of crane section gingerly balancing on its support on the bed of the trailer. It was about 10ft tall. When pointing out to the site H&S chief the absolute absurdity of what he was instructing, it just went in one ear and straight out of the other. Either do as I say or you don't come on site. I refused to even entertain it and the management agreed when I rang them. After sitting there for most of the day while they argued it out with each other, I got instructions to take it back to the docks. I later heard that it sat there on the trailer for 2 weeks before a dock crane lifted it and put it on one of Liebherr's own trucks that had come over specially from Germany to take it to the site. Our company made a small fortune off them in fines and storage costs.All these companies don't give a single fk about anyone's health or safety. If you injure yourself or die they don't care, just so long as it's not on their property so you can't put in a claim. But I can see it from both sides as there are so many dumb people out there these days who don't use their brain or take any responsibility for their actions, putting in claim after claim for "compo" and 99% of the time they get away with it. Companies are then forced to put all these measures in place to protect themselves. It's largely a problem of our own making.
oobster said:
I've worked in a H&S role for nearly 24 years now and most of the laws, regulations and approved codes of practice are just good sound advice but H&S seems to be more about protecting the employer from being sued if an employee does something daft that is it about protecting their workers.
When I was working for DSM their attitude was... 'Stop the employee doing something daft/getting hurt and we won't have to worry about getting sued'
Their attitude was similar the Swiss cheese model, on the very rare occasions something did go wrong they took the view that it wasn't caused by an individual making a mistake but a weakness or failure in the process that allowed that individual to make that mistake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
hammo19 said:
H&S was something added on top of common sense to make money and annoy humans.
In the 80s into the 90s 500-600 workers were killed each year. Into the 00s there was still around 250 people killed per year. Last year there was 135 people killed. I still see far too many incidents to this day. I wouldn't want to return to the standards when I was young. Serious incidents were far too common.
Driver101 said:
hammo19 said:
H&S was something added on top of common sense to make money and annoy humans.
In the 80s into the 90s 500-600 workers were killed each year. Into the 00s there was still around 250 people killed per year. Last year there was 135 people killed. I still see far too many incidents to this day. I wouldn't want to return to the standards when I was young. Serious incidents were far too common.
Getragdogleg said:
Driver101 said:
hammo19 said:
H&S was something added on top of common sense to make money and annoy humans.
In the 80s into the 90s 500-600 workers were killed each year. Into the 00s there was still around 250 people killed per year. Last year there was 135 people killed. I still see far too many incidents to this day. I wouldn't want to return to the standards when I was young. Serious incidents were far too common.
It is bad that companies are so protective of their safety record that they'll move their production facilities off to countries where safety issues and incidents are not recorded or highlighted.
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