On 16/04/2019 10:07, Davey wrote:
On Mon, 15 Apr 2019 15:22:24 +0100
Andy Burns wrote:

Davey wrote:

The neighbours are having an extension to their house built (Grrr),
and the people doing the work appear to have no Personal Protection
Equipment at all.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/construction/cdm/2015/domestic-clients.htm

That appears to lead to a host of "Well, maybe, possibly" results.

When I worked in the US in industrial construction, it was absolutely
spelld out what, why, where all PPE was required. To the point of
absurdity sometimes, it seemed to us who had to abide by it. And then I
went to work in Mexico, and watched guys up in the rafters doing
cleaning, with harnesses on, but attached to nothing.

It is amazing how much OTT H&S can slow and cost, while basic things get
ignored.

In the UK one industrial site that I was involved with went mad on
"working at height" - requiring our electricians to wear harnesses when
they were working on a scaffold platform where their feet were only 1m
from the ground! They simply needed to reach over the top of a 2.1m tall
panel to gland off cables coming into it. All a harness did was to
prevent them moving sideways or backwards at all, as they had to be kept
so short to prevent them hitting the floor if they fell. However, one of
our guys was walking behind the building, with the client's maintenance
manager, when someone ran across a pipe-bridge with no walkway or
railings and was immediately challenged as to whether it was one of our
guys - it wasn't and the subject was simply dropped.

Another site was even worse (a bakery around Leicester). I visited a few
times to see how our guys were getting on and they were complaining
about the requirement for hi-viz vests. It was very hot weather and they
were uncomfortable to wear. The only place they were needed was outside
the building, on the back road - which would have been fair enough, but
the only place they needed to access was a new chiller unit, which was
accessed via a door right next to it and completely surrounded by newly
installed Armco. There was no need at all for the vests there, but the
client refused to relax the rules at all. A year or so later, after the
building had been pased back to the client, they completely ignored
maintenance rules when they had a problem with the linear oven (about
25m long and bread was conveyed through on a stainless-steel belt as it
baked). They were supposed to shut it down, remove all the side panels
and wait 8 hours for it to cool. They shut down, did not remove the side
panels, waited 4 hours and sent two guys in on the conveyor. It was
still very hot, there were raised dividers on the belt, so the guys
could not crawl out and they screamed and screamed as they were burnt to
death. I found out about that one when an H&SE publication detailing a
number events leading to high-value fines crossed my desk.

SteveW