Company Exposes 13 Employees and Contractors to Asbestos

We've been reminded of the value of a detailed risk assessment this week after it was revealed SSE Hornsea Ltd allowed 13 employees and contractors to be exposed to asbestos fibres.

Hornsea runs a natural gas storage facility on the East Yorkshire coast and tasked a team of maintenance staff with removing a non-return valve from a compressed air distribution system. In order to remove the sealing gasket material, they fitted a wire brush to an electric drill. That worked, but filled the workshop with dust.

It turns out the dust contained chrysotile (white) asbestos, which 13 people had then come into contact with over the course of two days before the danger was revealed and the workshop closed.

The Health and Safety Executive decided to prosecute SSE Hornsea. Not only had the risk assessment failed to identify the asbestos risk, but the records held regarding the non-return valve were inadequate. Also, the maintenance team leader had not undergone asbestos awareness training.

As well as the potential impact this dust could have on the future health of the 13 exposed people, Hornsea now has to pay a £300,000 fine and £12,670.72 in costs. The company pleaded guilty to breaching Sections 2 (1) and 3(1) of the Health & Safety at Work etc, Act 1974.

It should go without saying: train your staff! We carry out a range of training courses including asbestos awareness. Please get in touch if you would like to learn more or book places.

Source: HSE

Working well together

Following on from C&D’s recent success at the World Demolition Awards in the Collaboration category and a similar training day earlier in the year, we are pleased to announce yet another great example of how a number of agencies working together can make a very positive difference.

In this instance, C&D have teamed up with the Health and Safety Executive, the Working Well Together charity, and the National Demolition Training Group to provide a number of free sessions of Asbestos Awareness training sessions to local small businesses and the self-employed. We will be providing the training, the HSE and WWT the publicity, and the NDTG have kindly agreed to provide the UKATA approved certification.

The very good news is that all the sessions are now booking well with over a week to go. This means that nearly 30 people will benefit from gaining this knowledge, which hopefully will prevent them from suffering from a truly horrible disease in the future.

Well done to all of us!

Working well together

Following on from C&D’s recent success at the World Demolition Awards in the Collaboration category, we are pleased to announce yet another great example of how a number of agencies working together can make a very positive difference.

Follow this link to our training site to see how collaboration can be so important...

Top issues highlighted and prosecuted by the HSE in recent months

Towards the end of last year we listed a number of of issues that had been highlighted by the HSE following visits to both Demolition and Construction sites. This new list is an update to that from last year and has been compiled using data supplied by the HSE over recent months and details the issues that have been raised as a result of site visits over that period. These are recurring issues, hence the reason for highlighting them, and in many cases have resulted in prosecutions of the contractor involved.

1. Poor management of Temporary Works
2. Risk of Collapse due to structural instability
3. No Asbestos Survey
4. No Asbestos Awareness Training
5. Inadequate or no Welfare Facilities
6. Incorrect or bad maintenance of Plant
7. Inadequate Fire Risk Assessment and/or Fire Provision
8. Work at height Issues
9. Failure to protect against Electrocution through access to live conductors or unsafe equipment
10. Unshored excavations with risk of collapse
11. Inadequate Site Security
12. Poor All Round Visibility on site vehicles
13. Safety Pins missing or unused on semi-automatic and manual quick hitches
14. Lack Public Protection by adequate segregation
15. Failure to prevent a Person Falling
16. Failure to prevent Materials Falling

Many, if not all of these issues, can be avoided by appropriate training of the workforce, C&D are in a great position to help with this. Not only can we identify your training needs through a skills analysis exercise, but we can also carry out much of the training required to cover the areas listed above.

Contact Stuart at stuart@demolishdismantle.co.uk to avoid your name being on the HSE’s list.

The perils of ignoring good advice

The owner of a stone masonry company has recently been successfully prosecuted by the HSE for failing to protect the health of his employees by exposing them to risks likely to cause long term and possibly life changing conditions.

Two major issues were identified:

• Firstly, the company did not provide face masks where necessary and those employees who did have masks were not face fitted correctly or unsuitable because of facial hair.
• Secondly, no risk assessments or health monitoring was done for the use of vibrating tools such as air hammers and as a result two workers were diagnosed with hand-arm vibration syndrome.

If this was not bad enough the owner of the company had previously received advice about these issues from the Health and Safety Executive.

Speaking after the hearing Health and Safety Executive inspector Fiona McGarry said: “Serious irreversible ill health or even death can result from exposure to silica and hand arm vibration syndrome is a permanent disabling condition. Employers need to take action to ensure they are providing adequate control to protect the health of employees.”

So what was the cost of ignoring the HSE advice?

The owner of the company was fined a total of £2,500 and was ordered to pay £1,921.29 in costs after pleading guilty to offences under Regulation 7 (1) of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 and Regulation 5 (1) and 7 (1) of the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005.

Watch Safedem strip a block of Red Road flats

Red Road is seen as Safedem's most challenging project to date. This is due in no small part to the steel frame construction they used combined with their height and scale. On top of that they contained a large amount of asbestos.

It was a massive job, and one that required working closely with the HSE to ensure complete safety throughout. But they succeeded, and this video is testament to how well they performed.

You can read more about the demolition on Safedem's website.

Norland Managed Services and Balfour Beatty fined for contractor's death

Two companies, Norland Managed Services and Balfour Beatty, have been fined a total of £380,000 by the British courts following the electrocution and death of a contractor.

The man in question, 27-year-old cable jointer Martin Walton, was working at the Morgan Stanley data center in London. He accidentally managed to come into contact with a 415V live terminal and died. This happened in 2010, while Walton was employed by Integrated Cable Services Ltd and contracted by Balfour Beatty.

The reason for the death was ruled as a management mistake. The work being carried out involved adding a new uninterruptible power supply to the data center. Norland Managed Services was the company in charge of the mechanical and electrical systems there, control that was handed to Balfour Beatty while the work was carried out.

The HSE, having assessed what caused the accident, found that no one involved understood fully what work was being carried out. This led to Mr Walton working next to a live cable without knowing it was live. This was not the fault of the contractor, but that of the two principal companies involved: Balfour Beatty and Norland.

The fine relates to breaching two sections of the Health and Safety Work Act. Balfour Beatty must pay £280,000 and Norland pays the other £100,000.

Datacenter Dynamics

It's time to let children back outdoors

HSE chair Judith Hackitt keeps a regular blog on the Health and Safety Executive website. Her posts are always worth reading, and one in particular drew our attention from her archives entitled Outdoor play - let our children take a risk.

It may be a few years old now, but the sentiment holds true. Here's an excerpt:

"Playing outside was something my generation did, and we were better for it. Certainly there were times when we came home with cuts and bruises - or even broken bones - but when we did we brought something else back with us: a lesson about the world.

If you fell out of a tree, it hurt. But it taught you either what not to do next time or that tree climbing was not for you...Subsequent generations have it seems gradually been deprived of that connection with the outdoors and the education that it afforded them.

When I speak to employers they often tell me that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find young people to take up apprenticeships who have the physical or mechanical aptitude of people they would have interviewed 10 or 15 years earlier. They haven't built a go-kart to race down a local hill, or repaired a puncture on their bike."

I'm sure many people feel this is the way things are today. Apprenticeships are growing in importance, but they need young people with the right (and basic) life experience and skills growing up should bring. So, we echo Judith's call to let children take a few risks outside.

Source: Judith Hackitt's HSE blog

Explosive storage and use rules have changed

Anyone involved in explosive demolition projects as explosives engineer, or like ourselves, as Principal Designer, will be aware that HSE have issued new guidance on the storage and use of explosives. Details of the guidance can be found at the following link:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/explosives/record-keeping.htm?ebul=hsegen&cr=18/26-may-15

If you are a "fan" of explosive demolition, and we certainly are, please keep following us on Twitter and by visiting the website as we currently have four explosive contracts scheduled for completion in the next six months. With that much work I suppose you could say "Business is Booming."

Plan, Check, Do

“This was an entirely avoidable incident. The risks associated with demolition activity are well known and long standing. Demolition, dismantling and structural alteration are high risk activities which require careful planning and execution by contractors who are competent in the full range of demolition techniques. In this case, demolition using hand tools meant workers were unnecessarily exposed to the risk of structural collapse. It would have been safer to use a long reach excavator, which was subsequently brought in to complete the demolition following the incident. Ultimately, the system of work planned was unsafe, resulting in severe injuries which still affect the worker today.”

This is an interesting quote from an HSE Inspector commenting on an, unfortunately, all too familiar story. We don’t need to know the full details to know that something went seriously wrong, but what makes it interesting is the inspector’s clear indication that the planning process for the work was flawed. The point made was not that there was no planning, but that the system of work in operation was wrong and resulted in the incident. This begs the question, why carry out the correct procedure and planning, without making sure it is an appropriate and safe system of work.

If you’re not sure get it checked. C&D can help with this, our extensive knowledge of demolition engineering from years of experience has helped many companies with just such issues. If you need help get in touch and we will see what we can do together.

HSE announces changes to Earth Moving Machinery due to visibility requirements

The Health and Safety Executive has released a new directive pertaining to Earth Moving Machinery and ISO5006, which is the ISO for visibility of plant. Tier 4 machines are no longer meeting ISO5006.

Action is required, with the full directive text available to read on the HSE website. Here's is the Action Required section for your convenience:

"Manufacturers and importers of Earth Moving Machinery within the scope of EN 474-1 should review the conformity assessment of their product ranges in respect of visibility from the operator’s position to ensure continued compliance. Where necessary they should then implement improvements to affected products. The review of the conformity assessment can be undertaken directly with the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC, in particular EHSRs 3.2.1. Operator’s Position, 1.1.2 (b) Principles of Safety Integration, and 1.7.4.2 (l) Contents of Instructions, and fully consider the state of the art. Manufacturers may wish to work towards the recommendations proposed in the amended standards, as they are developed, as part of their conformity assessment.

The review should take into account:

- The existing requirements of ISO 5006:2006
- The recommendations of the proposed amendments as they are developed
- The current state of the art
- The provision of information on residual risk. A visibility map is considered a suitable approach. (see Appendix 1) "

We must thank Craig Spillard of Spillard Safety Systems Ltd. for highlighting this new directive to us.

Please fill out a short survey and help the HSE

The HSE have been running a campaign about asbestos safety targeted at tradespeople and have asked for your feedback. We would be grateful if you could spare no more than 15 minutes to complete a simple on-line survey.

Your feedback will help HSE understand how effective the campaign has been and how they might make changes to their communications in the future. To complete the survey, just click on the link:

http://survey.euro.confirmit.com/wix/p1840409069.aspx?horgan=4

Your feedback will be completely anonymous. Please also forward to other tradespeople, who may have seen the campaign materials, to complete the survey. Responses are requested by 21st May. Thank you.

The cost of not checking how good your contractor is

A recent court case highlights many of the issues raised with the recent revision of the CDM Regulations that came into force on April 6th.

One of the UK’s largest toy manufacturer and importer needed some gutters clearing on their 3,344 square metre asbestos cement roof. As a result of a recommendation by one of their employees, the company appointed the employee's father, an unemployed builder, and his mate to do the work. Unfortunately the mate fell nine metres through a plastic skylight and suffered fatal injuries.

Both the company and the builder were prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive. The company was fined £200,000 and the builder was given a six-month jail sentence suspended for a year by Preston Crown Court. The company admitted a single breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 by failing to ensure the workers safety and was also ordered to pay £10,483 towards prosecution costs.

Basically, the company did no checks at all on the competency of the builder they employed. They did not ask for, or see risk assessments, method statements, or any other paperwork and as a result they had no idea as to how the work was to be carried out. Bear in mind this is a multi-national company with bases in the UK, Hong Kong, and Germany and with a multi-million pound turnover. At the time of the incident the company had no full time health and safety manager, they do now!

Under the new CDM regulations the Client has much more responsibility and a situation like this should never arise, however, if a company of this size does no checks, what about all those thousands of smaller companies around the country?

They're here...

The new CDM2015 Regulations -- Managing health and safety in construction -- have arrived.

The 90-page document is freely available online courtesy of the Health and Safety Executive. You can view it online and download it by clicking this link.

Happy reading!

How Temporary Is Temporary And Does It Matter?

A recent review of HSE News bulletins and trade headlines to see if we had missed anything important, other than the start of new CDM Regulations, over Easter, has shown the high number of times the phrase Temporary Works has been used. This got me thinking, what are they and how long do they have to be there before they become permanent? In fact, the first thing I found is that time is not really an issue at all, rather it is the reason for them being that which is important.

“Temporary works are the parts of a construction/demolition project that are needed to enable the permanent works to be built/demolished. Usually they are removed after use - ie access scaffolds, props, shoring, excavation support, falsework and formwork, etc. Sometimes they are incorporated into the permanent works - ie. haul road foundations and crane or piling platforms may be used for hardstanding or road foundations.” HSE Website.

This can be one of the reasons why Temporary Works continue to create so many problems on sites across the country. For example, that one acrow prop may only be needed for one day, but it may be even more important than the scaffold that is there for the week.

The legal requirement is that the “party in control must ensure that work is allocated and carried out in a manner that does not create unacceptable risk of harm to workers or members of the public.”

On projects with relatively simple Temporary Works needs, you may choose not to appoint a Temporary Works Co-ordinator. However, you must still make sure that Temporary Works are properly managed to ensure safety. Heras fencing, hoarding, ramps, footpath crossings, scaffold, site cabins are all classed as temporary works and need to be managed accordingly.

Further details on coming Temporary Works training will be released shortly, in the meantime if you have any questions please give us a call or send an email to stuart@demolishdismantle.co.uk

Special Care on Fragile Roofs

A recent case clearly indicates the procedures that should be implemented to ensure safe working at height and unfortunately, what can go tragically wrong when these are ignored.

A Cumbria based building firm and its owner have both been found guilty of corporate manslaughter following the death of a worker, after he fell nearly 8 metres through a roof on to the concrete floor below. The important message from this tragic incident is that the worker involved did not fall off the roof but rather, he fell through it. More specifically he fell through an unsafe skylight which was clearly designed not to support his weight. The HSE investigation found that the owner of the building firm knew that the skylights were unsafe, but did nothing to prevent the workers walking on them and then falling through.

The company pleaded guilty to corporate manslaughter and breaching section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act and was fined £200,000 and £20,000 respectively. In addition it also received a publicity order to inform people of the case and ordered to pay £31,500 in costs.

The owner of the company also pleaded guilty and he was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for two years and 200 hours of unpaid work.

On-Site Transport Safety

How do you control the vehicles on your site? Is there a traffic plan in place? Are there designated parking spaces? Who is competent to use what hand signals?

All the above are relevant questions that need to be asked with any vehicle moving on or adjacent to your site, which is there as a result of your works. However, a recent case shows that even the biggest local authority in the country can get it wrong. One of their workers suffered, fortunately non-life threatening injuries, when he was trapped by a non assisted reversing bin lorry. HSE investigators found by reviewing CCTV that such practice was not uncommon. It was however, contrary to the Authorities safe working procedure which required a colleague to act a reversing assistant for such manoeuvres.

As a result of not ensuring that these procedures were followed, the Authority was found in breach of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations Section 5(1). The resultant fine amounted to just under £12,000.

To help you answer all the original questions we suggest a C&D Vehicle Marshalling and Banksman Reversing Vehicles Course which covers:

• Ensuring the safe passage of reversing vehicles in confined spaces
• Identifying areas of danger within the site
• Demonstrating HSE and Road Transport Industry Training Board recommended code of signals
• Guidance of large goods vehicles both rigid and articulated using the above code of signals to HSE guide notes.

Further details and how to book the course can be found on the C&D Training website.

Health and Safety and Corporate Manslaughter

There have been a couple of cases, one that we highlighted recently that brings to the fore the issue of Corporate Manslaughter in the case of Health and Safety offences. Doing the job right tells the story of a building company and freelance Health and Safety Advisor who were both found guilty of Manslaughter and have recently been sent to jail for the offences.

On the 3rd February, 2015 a building and joinery firm was sentenced after pleading guilty in December to ‘corporate manslaughter’ and a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act by failing to ensure the safety of employees. The company was fined £200,000 for the corporate manslaughter offence, and £20,000 for the Health and Safety breach.

The owner of the company, also pleaded guilty to a breach of the same act and was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for two years, 200 hours unpaid work, a publicity order to advertise what happened on the company website for a set period of time, and to take out a half page spread in the local newspaper and pay costs of £31,504.77.

Clearly the courts are taking these matters very seriously indeed. However, there are other moves in the pipeline which may have even greater consequences. The Sentencing Council has released draft guidelines for the judiciary to place greater emphasis on realistic fines for both Corporate Manslaughter and Health and Safety offences. This could result in the maximum fines for the most serious offences been set at £20 million for Corporate Manslaughter and £10 million for Health and Safety.

The Right Tools for the Job

We all know that just about any job in the world can be done with a screwdriver and if not then the infamous Brummie screwdriver normally does the trick. That’s a hammer for those not from around here! In all seriousness though, a case bought to court recently by the Health and Safety Executive highlight the importance of why using the right tool for the job is so important and why using the wrong one can have serious consequences.

On January 12th Swindon magistrates heard how a construction company worker suffered a broken back whilst installing fencing on the Longleat Estate in Warminster. Despite the Method Statement stipulating the use of a post driver, and one being on its way to site, fence posts were being installed by using a digger bucket to push them into the ground. Whilst the employee in question was holding one of these posts, the top split and the bucket jumped sideways hitting him in the shoulder and causing a broken vertebrae. He spent over a week in hospital and is still in pain.

An HSE spokesman said “Workers have a right to expect that the equipment they use is appropriate for the task – on this occasion the equipment used was clearly not suitable for the job.”

As a result of this incident the company involved was fined £1,500 and ordered to pay costs of £1,117 after pleading guilty to a single breach of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.

Stuart Pearce believes he may get lung cancer because of asbestos exposure

Stuart Pearce is well known to most Brits as a former member of the England football team, but before turning professional he was in fact an electrician. He spent 4 years in the trade working for Brent council in London, but those four years have since filled him with great concern.

At the time, he was not told of the dangers of asbestos to his long term health, and he knows that his chance of exposure to asbestos at work and without safety equipment is very high while he was an apprentice. Understandably, he's a supporter of the HSE campaign to ensure everyone is aware of the substance's dangers.

Book an asbestos awareness course now as awareness training could save your life.

Source: Mirror and Austin Osuide for the image.