It doesn’t matter what phase of the project you are at – design, pre-tender or construction - or the size of the project we can help you prepare the health and safety plan. In many cases you will only require assistance with part of a plan, a particular element of a project or an individual task. We are more than happy to provide as much or as little help you need.
For individual activities whether they are routine activities which are part of your day to day work or one off maintenance or shutdown tasks we can help you prepare relevant and easily understood risk assessments and method statements. These are provided in as many formats as you require from fully detailed assessments of the works showing all our working to greatly simplified documents designed to be read and understood by those you are trying to protect.
As with all other health and safety documentation if your risk assessment is not read and understood by those at the sharp end then you have wasted your money.
We are able to help you produce policy documents which actually add value to the safety management processes. We are continually surprised at the number of policy documents which state that a company will protect its workers and contractors from harm. We would have hoped that this would be taken as read.
A good policy document should explain how you are going to protect people or comply with a particular piece of legislation. This is not to say you are looking to write another War and Peace but rather to demonstrate that you have considered all aspects of the problem and have developed an approach to addressing each in turn. After that there will almost certainly be a set of procedures or work instructions which will help people carry out work or deal with situations in line with your policy document.
All of these documents have to be understood by everyone who is to use them. A work instruction is of no use if it never leaves the folder in the supervisor’s office.
For a number of health and safety problems a well designed piece of software may go a long way towards a solution. Often the software is little more than a simple database which can be developed quickly on a limited budget. Sometimes something more complicated is required but this need not necessarily mean expensive.
The Modus approach to developing software means that you will always have control of the speed of development and the budget.
For more on software development click here.
Health and safety training is big business but few companies understand how they can deliver training in the most cost effective manner possible. There are training courses where people do have to leave site to attend specialised training centres for mandatory certification but how many training courses have you paid for where staff have returned condemning the day as a waste of time?
Perhaps the best maxim is little and often. If you can spend 15 minutes every few weeks on a particular subject then it is far more likely to be remembered. The toolbox talk or group safety meeting is perhaps the most powerful training tool you have and these are often under used and underrated. With training materials developed to suit your site and your staff and contractors training can be delivered by your own health and safety department, supervisors or chargehands. If the materials are designed correctly they can help inexperienced speakers deliver the material confidently while ensuring that they are relevant to everyone.
There are as many questions about health and safety management as there are jobs to do. If you have a question then please give us a call. We hope that we always give a straight answer.