SPI Piling Ltd, recently hosted our annual Health and Safety Day for 2021 which all our staff. The active involvement of the workforce is fundamental to good health and safety management. Throughout the day everyone interacted using web based interactive software increasing engagement and allowing informative live feedback to Alan Smith, the presenter and Managing Director. Alan has hosted these internal events since 2015, reinforcing the Senior Leadership commitment to Health & Safety within the company.
Let us talk about how our day went and some of the things we covered. Starting with the HSE and National Statistics, released the 2019/2020 Health and Safety Statistics, summarising the documents for your information.
Enforcements
The act of compelling observance of or compliance with a law, rule, or obligation. By not following the relevant laws, rules or obligations within health and safety at work the results shown below for 2019/2020 show the outcome of Prosecutions, Notices and Fines for none or little compliance with Healthy and Safety at Work.
- 325 Cases PROSECUTED where a conviction was achieved.
- 7,075 NOTICES issued by HSE.
- £35.8 Million in FINES resulting from PROSECUTION where a CONVICTION was achieved.
Our Safe System of Work (SSoW) is a formal procedure based on a systematic examination of work in order to identify the hazards. It defines safe methods of working which eliminate those hazards or minimise the risks associated with them. Put simply, a safe system of work is a defined method of doing a job in a safe way. PPE Standard within site rules and RAMS are there to mitigate the Risk.
Below is a pyramid that shows Statistical Trends.
The list is endless for what everyone would surmise is the biggest common hazard on construction sites such as;
behaviour, access, working conditions, poor visibility………..
All these answers are correct, there is no wrong answer. However, the biggest common Hazard is US HUMANS! Yes, us as individuals! We are all empowered to make decisions based upon our own knowledge and experiences. For us to improve and ensure the HUMAN factor is controlled is by, making sure that the following is in place by all individuals before starting any works.
- Training
- Knowledge
- Briefing
- Information
- Restrictions
- Instructions
The Team went on to review their own practices and in particular question the Health and Safety Culture within the business.
Behavioural and Behaviour Mechanisms and Challenges. The observable response made to a situation and the unconscious processes underlying it.
- As our safety systems, procedures, tools and PPE, etc. get better at removing risks, and as injury performance improves, the perception that it is safe here is reinforced.
- The perception that ‘it won’t happen to me’ is reinforced by low injury rates and good safety systems, and it is also strengthened when we are in control of what is going on (I’ll drive the car because then it will be okay – I feel less sure that it won’t happen if someone else is driving)
- In risk assessment terms, unless we are confronted with something that is patently dangerous, we give ourselves (on a subconscious level) a rating of 0 for likelihood of a bad thing happening.
- If the likelihood is (albeit subconsciously) 0, no matter how high the exposure and consequence figure, our (subconscious) risk rating is still 0 – that is why people left to their own devices do daft things.
- You are likely to get away with it for a while – probably long enough for the unsafe behaviour to become a habit. Combined with habit and alpha, PRP can be extremely dangerous.
Re- Establishing Our Commitment to improved Health and Safety Culture within the business setting our goal:
All our staff have signed our Safety Charter Promise (our Health and Safety Commitment) to make sure that we follow the safety charter rules;
- Safety is our number one priority.
- Safety of everyone is our responsibility.
- We will adopt a questioning attitude and will not take risks.
- We will acknowledge and act upon any near miss or potential breach of safety.
- We will acknowledge and act upon reported events
We will encourage and recognise good practice. Good performance and safety initiative will be recognised. We will consider the welfare of others at all times; in everything we do and/ or witness.
Statement from our Managing Director Alan Smith
“Allowing our workforce the facility and time to gather is key to ensuring their input into what the business needs to do to improve performance and compliance. The safety days held each year work really well in gathering the thoughts at each and every level of the business. You would expect that peer pressure would drive down the workforce participation but in actual fact these events get better every year with more and more topical discussions about the intricate details of our daily operations.
I would like to thank everybody for attending and hope by sharing our experiences we continue to drive forward the passion for Health and Safety within our business”
Maybe you would like to take part in one of our interactive elements (all interactions are anonymous – closing date 8th December 2021). Simply click on the link or access using the QR code then use Code 5762 2439.
The results will be provided in our next newsletter.
PLEASE STAY SAFE!
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