In 2011 the New York Times reported that the Santa Cruz police department arrested two women in a downtown car park. One for possession of illegal drugs, the other had outstanding warrants, both were peering into car windows when the police arrived. What was unusual about the incident was the fact that the police were alerted by a computer program … Read More
Manufacturing Safety by the Numbers (part 2 of 2)
In the first part of this two-part post we looked at the raw numbers for safety performance in the manufacturing sector with specific focus on discrete manufacturing. We noted that discrete manufacturing in the UK has an average fatality rate over the past 5 years that is 50% higher than that for all industry sectors and a non-fatal injury rate … Read More
Manufacturing Safety by the Numbers (part 1 of 2)
It’s our contention that, along with the construction sector, manufacturing will be key to leading the UK out of recession after the coronavirus lockdown ends. It’s our hope that this return to work and growth will be achieved without compromising (non-coronavirus related) worker safety. So how has the manufacturing sector performed compared to other industry sectors over recent years? Before … Read More
Why Focusing on Safety Performance Can Enable Construction to Bounce Back
The UK construction sector is critical to the future of the economy. Despite the latest PMI figures and what was labelled a “total collapse” of the construction sector, its importance is beyond economic and is fundamental to addressing the social injustices created by decades of regional centralisation. Witness how “levelling-up” entered our discourse through the end of 2019 and into … Read More
Realigning Health and Safety in the Business
Over the last year or so we’ve posited ideas around having health and safety become a keystone habit in the business and aligning health and safety outcomes with business growth and why doing so was important. We highlighted three categorisations for how health and safety is viewed within the business: as a cost centre as delivering business benefits as a … Read More
Delivering Contractor Compliance with e-permits (part 2 of 2)
Part 2 – Issuing the Permit to Work Request, Dynamic Risk Assessments, and the Closing Process Part 1 of this 2 part post looked at the permit-to-work request and approval process. This post looks at the issue process through to the close process beginning with the contractor arriving on site. e-permits manages the whole process beginning with ascertaining if the … Read More
Delivering Contractor Compliance with e-permits (part 1 of 2)
Part 1 – The Permit to Work Request and Approval Process A key benefit of using e-permits for permit-to-work is ensuring contractor compliance or, as Greg Markham of EMCOR stated, “The best way to control contractors that I’ve ever seen”. This post is the first in a two part series looking at how e-permits delivers contractor compliance. Here we cover … Read More
Is Global Asbestos Awareness Week Still Relevant Given Covid-19?
Absolutely it is. 5,500 people die every year in the UK alone from diseases caused by exposure to asbestos. Worldwide, 742,000 die every year from work-related cancers including those caused by exposure to asbestos. Are these asbestos-related deaths in the UK just the result of legacy exposures? Or, only caused by fly-by-night operators cutting corners? No, and no. The NHS alone has … Read More
Permit-to-Work from Home
***For the duration of the current Government coronavirus lockdown, we are making the Electronic Signatures and PPE modules available to clients free of charge, thereby, enabling more people to work from home while keeping building maintenance workers safe.*** With the current Covid-19 crisis and Government lockdown many of us are forced to work from home while many are faced with … Read More
Working from Home Guidance
There have been many good, well-intentioned articles in both the print press and online over the past week about how to successfully work from home. The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday (March 17th) advocated working from 9am to 5pm to maximise overlap with colleagues and speed decision making. Google recommend creating “work” triggers for your brain such as establishing a designated … Read More
So, is Numerology Bunkum?
At the end of last year we welcomed in 2020 with a cheerful note on what we had to look forward in this year of symmetrical numbers. We cheerily looked at the positives we, as a health and safety industry, could take from Brexit, Data/Technology and Wellness, and did this with the backdrop of the Numerologists’ view that 2020 would … Read More
2020 Health and Safety Webinar Series
Following is the 2020 schedule for our ongoing series of health and safety webinars. Mark your calendars as appropriate. You can access/register for past/upcoming webinars via the left sidebar of this page. 12th March – Contractor Compliance, Needs Vision not Hindsight As technology advancements and global political and macro-economic trends continue to impact the worker landscape, so we’re already seeing … Read More
Contractor Compliance in 2020 – Needs Vision not Hindsight
Greg Markham, Technical Director of EMCOR UK described e-permits as, “The Best Way to Control Contractors that I’ve Ever Seen”. He further described the pros and cons of e-permits as follows: e-permits Pros Logical, easy to use and covers all aspects of Contractor Control. Places the onus on the Contractor to supply the necessary detail, but also on the controllers … Read More
The Stress Tsunami
Since Christmas I’ve read two books: John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ and Andrew Yang’s ‘The War on Normal People’. Steinbeck tale of the Joad’s displacement from their 1930s dust bowl farm in Oklahoma and migration to the promised land of California is probably well known to the reader. That their displacement was caused by automation and greedy landowners/big business, … Read More
Aligning Health and Safety With Business Growth (Part 2 of 2)
In the first part of this two-part post, we discussed why health and safety needs to be aligned with the growth of the business and, at all costs, to avoid being seen as a cost centre. How do we, therefore, make health and safety a keystone habit? Something the business obsesses over and which, ultimately, becomes the engine of business … Read More
Aligning Health and Safety With Business Growth (Part 1 of 2)
In our last post on the changing role of the Health and Safety Manager we posited that there is an ever increasing requirement for the H&S Manager to justify their existence and that the most enduring way to provide this justification is to align health and safety performance with the growth of the business. The alternatives to aligning with growth … Read More
