Health & Safety – How competent are your contractors?
Contractors are used to carry out activities where the client does not have the necessary skills, experience or resources to do so themselves.
Failing to effectively manage contractors can and does lead to accidents affecting not only the contractors’ employees… Health & Safety – The ‘top 10’ prosecutions of 2019
During 2018 and 2019, total fines for health and safety offences prosecuted by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (Scotland) and the HSE (England and Wales) equated to £54.5m, although this was down 25% on the £72.6m for the… Health & Safety – Reviewing risk assessments
Businesses go to (or should be going to…) great lengths evaluating the risks to their employees’ safety, risk assessment being the tool used to perform this evaluation. Risk assessment is looking at a potential situation in the workplace which could… Health & Safety – Near miss reporting – what if…
Near miss? – an event not causing harm but has the potential to cause injury or ill health.
Or think of it another way, a near miss could be considered as a ‘near hit’.
Near misses occur all too frequently… Health & Safety – Managing the neglected risk of the ‘grey fleet’
What is ‘grey fleet’?
Simply put it is any vehicle which is not owned, leased or rented by an employer that is used by an employee for business travel*, mostly this applies to private vehicles owned by an employee. This… Health & Safety – Update to RIDDOR Reporting Process
The HSE are currently updating their suite of RIDDOR forms and aim to have this work completed by the end of April. While the requirements to report remains unchanged the online forms themselves are being refreshed to give them a… Health & Safety – Plane common sense – Pay attention to safety briefings, it could save your life
During a recent flight I was interested to note (briefly) how many of my fellow passengers around me were actually paying attention to the pre-flight safety briefing being delivered by the crew; almost all were otherwise absorbed in something much… Health & Safety – HSE issues new guidance on mental ill health
Mental ill health is the primary cause of employee long term sickness absence equating to 57% of all working days lost, or around 15.4 million lost days per year in 2017/18. In comparison non-fatal workplace injuries equated to 3.9 million… Health & Safety – Paying lip service to health and safety targets and culture? At what cost?
A recent study by Aberdeen based oil and gas software firm Petrotechnics (‘Feeling the Squeeze: the state of process safety risk and operational risk management’) revealed that only 73% of planned safety critical maintenance in the high hazard oil and… Health & Safety – Mandatory safety competence test for architects
A response of the independent review into the Grenfell Tower fire of June 2017, in which 71 people tragically lost their lives, has put increased pressure on architects to be able to demonstrate to the construction industry, clients and procurement…