When a valued customer telephones asking for immediate assistance, it is natural that companies wish to react immediately to ensure customer satisfaction How To Pronounce Subcontractor and repeat business. Particularly in the current economic climate, it is essential for companies to treat their customers with optimum priority.
However there are instances where companies, in their anxiety to please clients, do this without considering safety issues – this ultimately puts their employees’ lives at risk.
Construction sites are thankfully, or regretfully depending on your point of view, very forgiving places regarding health and safety. For every fatality there are approximately 240,000 near misses. These statistics do not take into account the many thousands of unreported misses, and therefore in reality the ratio is even greater. Because most workers will continue to get away with it, the “it will never happen to me” attitude will prevail. Not a week goes by without an experienced worker commenting “I have been doing this job thirty five years and never been involved in anything other than a cut finger, this health and safety business is now completely over the top”. Unless this mind-set changes, statistics will continue to remain high.
When carrying out roofwork, these risks are magnified many times because virtually all work involves working at height – the single biggest risk area in the construction industry. The risks are increased ever further in the case of emergency repairs, due to the lack of time available for planning.
A case in point recently occurred when a maintenance operative received a call at his home from his employer requesting him to go the next morning directly to a property where the roof had started leaking badly. The operative duly obliged. He was equipped with a company pickup truck, ladders and roof materials but no tower scaffold. The operative gained accessed to the roof which was 4 metres high using an aluminum ladder, he then removed the clay tiles and used the tile battens as access. Unfortunately he slipped and fell to ground level where he lay severely injured until he was able to attract the attention of some passersby. In his anxiety to satisfy the client, both employer and operative took unnecessary risks with no risk assessments and method statements being carried out. As well as no safe means of access, there was also a lone working issue.
Emergencies will inevitably arise and the chances are that in the case of roofwork, such emergencies will only arise in heavy rain, thus adding to the danger which already exists. If companies are specialising in emergency work it is essential their teams are:-
• Supplied with adequate access equipment to cover most eventualities, ie. roof ladders and tower scaffold. If they encounter situations where use of this equipment Home Improvements Companies is unsafe, then they should not access the roof until a safe means of access is available, ie. scaffold access or a Mobile Elevated Work Platform (MEWP).
• Personnel are trained to carry out risk assessments and method statements as well as the safe use, erection and dismantling of the access equipment.
• A lone work policy is in place.
This list is not exhaustive.
Businesses are ill advised to cut back on health and safety training or their health and safety support as by doing so their employees and sub-contractors will be at far greater risk of injury or ill health. By outsourcing safety to an external health and safety organisation which specialises in the construction industry, considerable financial savings can be made, together with increased benefits.
A not for profit organisation, such as The Building Safety Group Ltd (BSG), dedicates their time to the promotion and advancement of health, safety, welfare and environmental matters within the construction industry. Safety Advisers conduct site visits and give clients practical advice on potential dangers, what training maybe required, and how to avoid fines or prosecution from the likes of the HSE.
Construction