In today’s press, health and safety is in danger of becoming more synonymous with business restriction or, rather, an excuse for why not to do something, rather than a method of improving our business.
With rising reported accident rates, increased legislation, and an American-style claims culture, more and more people see health and safety as too much bureaucracy being placed on our businesses. But these issues should not be seen as a threat to our business; they are more of an opportunity. The time has come to tackle the issues head on.
At the Trussed Rafter Association, for example, we have firmly grasped this concept.
One area we identified for improvement was in the supply chain. Working in conjunction with the Health & Safety Executive (HSE), we have developed a voluntary code of practice for the loading, haulage and delivery of trussed rafters. The HSE is now referring to these guidelines when investigating accidents.
We have also established a haulage training pack and code of conduct. This provides the lorry driver with training on safe systems for the unloading of trusses. This, again, was written with HSE’s help and has been a major selling point with customers as they try to meet the HSE Moving Goods Safety campaign.
We don’t want to stop there. We have been working with a number of haulage companies to develop a system of allowing the driver and customer to remove the trusses by fork lift from the lorry without the need to stand on the vehicle. The HSE has complemented this approach as it embraces its “work at height” and “falls from height” campaigns.
We have also been working on an excellent HSE idea called Trojan Horse: a method of getting the safety message direct to the end user. This is ideally a pictogram as the message must be understood by all site operatives, irrespective of language or literacy. In a pilot scheme, we have placed the messages on the lorry, rather than on the trusses. If it’s successful we hope to encourage all our members to take this up.
These ideas are small practical steps to reduce the risk of accidents to a manageable level while increasing business opportunities.
So, is health and safety an obstruction? Not from where I am sitting!
