Frontline has been commissioned by HSE to evaluate the impact of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 on the construction industry in the UK. It is hosting a number of open forums and workshops to get views from the industry. These free events will last for three (3) hours and places are available on a first come, first served basis. In inviting CRS's clients, HSE says that it genuinely wants to hear people's views 5th October 2010 - Cardiff:
6th October, 2010 - Exeter
13th October, 2010 - Glasgow
14th October, 2010 - Newcastle
19th October, 2010 - Surrey
20th October, 2010 - Kent
Register online if you would like to attend at http://www.hse.gov.uk/construction/cdm.htm?ebul=cons/sep2010&cr=3
Wednesday 29 September 2010
Tuesday 28 September 2010
Auditing Standards ISO 19011 v. ISO/IEC 17021-2
When ISO 17021-2 is published, will ISO 19011 be needed? This blog article explains the differences between the two auditing standards and an update on the current revision of ISO 19011.
ISO is an organization that develops, produces and provide technical standards to encourage standardisation. You might well ask yourself how there can be two working groups developing separate standards relating to auditing competency:
How then are the two standards going to be used, whether separately or together? The third-party certification industry will use ISO 17021-2 to define requirements for audits and audit arrangements and accreditation bodies will determine whether a certification body’s auditing arrangements and activities comply with those requirements. Those developing ISO 19011 hope that enlightened people involved in third-party certification will also use the guidance standard to continue to develop their auditors, programmes and the audit process.
The ‘New’ ISO 19011
At the same time as ISO 17021-2 is being developed, the working group charged with reviewing ISO 19011 has been revising the standard. The main changes from the 2002 edition include an extension of the standard’s scope of application from quality and environmental management systems to all types of management systems auditing.
Continuing the development of management systems standards for health and safety, food and information security, for example, means that ISO 19011 must be able to accommodate differing requirements while still providing useful guidance. One phrase that has been used many times in the development process is: ‘An audit is an audit, is an audit.’
The revision will include an enhanced section 7 of the main standard which deals with auditor competence. The section covers:
Risk-based auditing will be acknowledged for the first time in the revision. While the topic is not dealt with as a separate issue, the standard emphasizes the need to assess what an organization does and, by extension the significant risks associated with its activities in developing an audit programme, audit plans and in selecting competent auditors.
Integrated audits are also covered in sections five and seven, but without any specific guidance as to how an integrated audit differs from an audit of a system designed to meet one management system standard.
Annex C now includes further guidance on the use of alternative audit methods such as remote audits as part of a programme, more on the audit process and help in the use of audit sampling. The section on judgemental sampling even includes an attempt to capture the ‘auditor’s nose’ that many have seen in action where an experienced auditor uses their knowledge and skills and chooses the single record that contains a nonconformity from the hundreds available to select.
The revised ISO 19011 has been updated and restructured throughout to reflect changes to the auditing profession over the last eight years, but there is still extensive duplication between sections. For example, guidance for audit methods is mentioned in nine separate sections and has a whole annex of its own. It depends on your point of view as to whether having all the information available in one section at the expense of this duplication works well.
At the working group’s last meeting in Mexico, it dealt with more than 200 pages of comments from national standards bodies and produced the draft international standard that is currently being reviewed and commented on. From this point on it becomes more difficult to make substantive changes to the standard but the working group can still refine the text.
Publication of the revised standard is planned for late 2011.
ISO is an organization that develops, produces and provide technical standards to encourage standardisation. You might well ask yourself how there can be two working groups developing separate standards relating to auditing competency:
- ISO 19011
- ISO/IEC 17021-2
How then are the two standards going to be used, whether separately or together? The third-party certification industry will use ISO 17021-2 to define requirements for audits and audit arrangements and accreditation bodies will determine whether a certification body’s auditing arrangements and activities comply with those requirements. Those developing ISO 19011 hope that enlightened people involved in third-party certification will also use the guidance standard to continue to develop their auditors, programmes and the audit process.
The ‘New’ ISO 19011
At the same time as ISO 17021-2 is being developed, the working group charged with reviewing ISO 19011 has been revising the standard. The main changes from the 2002 edition include an extension of the standard’s scope of application from quality and environmental management systems to all types of management systems auditing.
Continuing the development of management systems standards for health and safety, food and information security, for example, means that ISO 19011 must be able to accommodate differing requirements while still providing useful guidance. One phrase that has been used many times in the development process is: ‘An audit is an audit, is an audit.’
The revision will include an enhanced section 7 of the main standard which deals with auditor competence. The section covers:
- Behavioural aspects, such as generic knowledge and skills
- Discipline or sector-specific skills
- Evaluation and maintenance of competence.
- Systems and principles
- Legal requirements
- Techniques used within the discipline
- Terminology and technology
- Sector- or organization-specific knowledge
Risk-based auditing will be acknowledged for the first time in the revision. While the topic is not dealt with as a separate issue, the standard emphasizes the need to assess what an organization does and, by extension the significant risks associated with its activities in developing an audit programme, audit plans and in selecting competent auditors.
Integrated audits are also covered in sections five and seven, but without any specific guidance as to how an integrated audit differs from an audit of a system designed to meet one management system standard.
Annex C now includes further guidance on the use of alternative audit methods such as remote audits as part of a programme, more on the audit process and help in the use of audit sampling. The section on judgemental sampling even includes an attempt to capture the ‘auditor’s nose’ that many have seen in action where an experienced auditor uses their knowledge and skills and chooses the single record that contains a nonconformity from the hundreds available to select.
The revised ISO 19011 has been updated and restructured throughout to reflect changes to the auditing profession over the last eight years, but there is still extensive duplication between sections. For example, guidance for audit methods is mentioned in nine separate sections and has a whole annex of its own. It depends on your point of view as to whether having all the information available in one section at the expense of this duplication works well.
At the working group’s last meeting in Mexico, it dealt with more than 200 pages of comments from national standards bodies and produced the draft international standard that is currently being reviewed and commented on. From this point on it becomes more difficult to make substantive changes to the standard but the working group can still refine the text.
Publication of the revised standard is planned for late 2011.
Oil and Gas Industry warned about Safety Record
The British offshore oil and gas industry has been warned about its safety record as new statistics show an increase in major injuries and hydrocarbon releases:
Fatalities and Major Injuries
Figures released by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) show that there were fifty RIDDOR major injuries reported between April 2009 and March 2010, an increase of twenty on the previous year.
For the third consecutive year, there were no fatalities in the areas that HSE regulates. BUT this doesn't take into account seventeen lives that were lost in offshore-related transport incidents.
Hydrocarbon Releases
There was also a significant increase in the number of major and significant hydrocarbon releases. These include unplanned gas releases and can potentially lead to major incidents. There were eighty five compared with sixty one in 2008/09 - an increase of twenty-four.
Sunday 26 September 2010
More Money, More Credibility & More Security for H&S Practitioners
Long-gone are the days when a ‘good old boy’ became the Safety Officer, or was made redundant. Today’s Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner is more credible, more qualified, and better paid than ever before. In 2003, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) gained its Royal Charter, signifying it’s pre-eminence. Two years later, suitably qualified individual members of IOSH became eligible to be personally Chartered, and to add the designatory letters CMIOSH or CFIOSH to their names. This puts them on a similar professional footing to other Chartered professions such as Accountants, Engineers, and Solicitors. IOSH, which is now the world’s largest membership body for safety and health practitioners, accepts three types of qualifications for Chartered membership - a NEBOSH Diploma, an approved university degree in OSH, or the Occupational Health and Safety Practice (OH&SP) NVQ4. At CRS, we believe that our mentored NVQ4 programme in OH&SP provides the best route to Chartered status for practical people, as the competencies you will demonstrate in order to qualify are flexible for the busy practitioner, and wholly work-based.
The benefits of professional qualifications:
The evidence necessary to show your competence is normally generated in your work. Your reflective reports will describe the evidence, and explain your approach to each of the ten (10) units.
With an average level of effort, you will complete the programme within a year, though the speed will largely be determined by your own requirements – you can progress more quickly, or more slowly. This is for you to decide! Either way, after completion, IOSH will accept your qualification for Graduate membership (Grad IOSH). After completing a programme of IOSH Initial Professional Development (IPD), you will be welcomed to CMIOSH status. For further information please visit http://www.iosh.co.uk/membership/about_membership/about_ipd.aspx
This website includes very useful information and guidance, including framework units upon which to base your submissions – contents include:
Corporate Risk Systems is externally certified to ISO9001:2008, and is an Investor in People as an additional reassurance of our quality provision. We aim to provide excellence in certified training, with real career and salary advancement, and practical hands-on learning as the reward for you.
Our approach is one-to-one with unlimited e-mail and telephone support, and we structure our assistance to suit your needs. The programme is ultimately for your professional development - you dictate the pace, you are in control, and we provide the level of support that matches your demands.
Payments by instalment are available upon request for candidates paying for their own professional development.
Contact Charles Ford to enrol or for more details. You’ll be glad you did.
E: cmf@crsrisk.com T: 01283 509175 M: 07968 483615
The benefits of professional qualifications:
- CREDIBILITY – in the workplace
- SECURITY – with millions of employers, and just 14000 Chartered members of IOSH, you’ll probably have one of the securest jobs around
- EMPLOYABILITY – naturally the best jobs go to the best candidates, and the best candidates attract the best salaries
Our OH&SP NVQ Programme
The team at CRS probably provides the best Occupational Safety and Health Practice NVQ4 programme of its type in the World. Our team includes a former External Verifier from the awarding body (City & Guilds); we have more international candidates than any other centre; and we are the third largest provider for this qualification in the UK. Our experience and excellent reputation has led over 750 candidates - over 240 currently – to pass through our hands. Our candidates have virtually all progressed to CMIOSH, and considerably enhanced their salaries and career prospects with organisations such as:- Goodyear Dunlop
- DairyCrest
- Intercontinental Hotel Group
- Ministry of Defence
- The Prison Service
- NHS
How does the programme work?
Your development and learning is demonstrated by progressively assembling a portfolio of evidence which confirms your competence to do the essential work of a Safety and Health Practitioner. You will have a personal mentor throughout your study to help and support you to meet the required standards. This mentor support is one-to-one, with planned, regular meetings, as well as contact by telephone and e-mail. Our approach works well for distance learning too – we have recently worked with candidates from China, the Netherlands, Qatar and Romania.The evidence necessary to show your competence is normally generated in your work. Your reflective reports will describe the evidence, and explain your approach to each of the ten (10) units.
With an average level of effort, you will complete the programme within a year, though the speed will largely be determined by your own requirements – you can progress more quickly, or more slowly. This is for you to decide! Either way, after completion, IOSH will accept your qualification for Graduate membership (Grad IOSH). After completing a programme of IOSH Initial Professional Development (IPD), you will be welcomed to CMIOSH status. For further information please visit http://www.iosh.co.uk/membership/about_membership/about_ipd.aspx
Getting Started
Once enrolled on our occupational health and safety practice NVQ4, candidates are provided with a password to obtain all of the programme materials via our very convenient and secure internet site.This website includes very useful information and guidance, including framework units upon which to base your submissions – contents include:
- The Occupational Health and Safety Practice NVQ4 Standards with Guidance
- A helpful and instructional document ‘How to Assemble your Portfolio’
- Templates reports for each unit (611 – 620)
- All the forms and paperwork; plus:
-
- Mentor Profiles
- IOSH Membership Application Form
- IOSH CPD/IPD Information
- Useful Web Links
Programme Entry Requirements
CRS welcome experienced health and safety managers, officers, and advisors to its occupational health and safety practice NVQ4 programme. There are no formal entry requirements, although we favour those with two years experience and/or holders of a NEBOSH Certificate, for example the NEBOSH National General Certificate, the NEBOSH International General Certificate or the NEBOSH Construction Certificate.Final Points
CRS has experience of occupational health and safety practice NVQ4 qualifications since their launch 1995, and is one of the most experienced providers in the world. We'll also be a provider of the new Occupational Health and Safety Practice NVQ from 1 January 2011 - it will be called the 'NVQ5 Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety Practice'. This will be the fourth version of the qualification in fifteen years, and we will continue to provide excellent service when it is launched.Corporate Risk Systems is externally certified to ISO9001:2008, and is an Investor in People as an additional reassurance of our quality provision. We aim to provide excellence in certified training, with real career and salary advancement, and practical hands-on learning as the reward for you.
Our approach is one-to-one with unlimited e-mail and telephone support, and we structure our assistance to suit your needs. The programme is ultimately for your professional development - you dictate the pace, you are in control, and we provide the level of support that matches your demands.
Payments by instalment are available upon request for candidates paying for their own professional development.
Contact Charles Ford to enrol or for more details. You’ll be glad you did.
E: cmf@crsrisk.com T: 01283 509175 M: 07968 483615
Tuesday 21 September 2010
Lord Young delays report
Further to our earlier forecast that Lord Young would present his report today (21 September 2010), it now seems that it will now be further delayed - following the Cameron paternity and bereavement until the Conservative Party conference to be held in Birmingham 3-6 October 2010. The report is eagerly awaited by health and safety practitioners and the media alike. In a move clearly designed to play to the party faithful, the government seems set to scrap a number of what right-leaning newspapers call “petty rules and laws”; it blames the previous Labour government for allowing a rise in bureaucratic health and safety red tape.
In moves presumably intended to pave the way for the Prime Minister’s presentation of the report, a number of newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, are using increasingly divisive language. A comment article published by the Telegraph talks about health and safety laws as “weapons” used to “pursue an impossible object: the elimination of risk from human activity”. The same article summarises that “if the report succeeds in bringing an end to the caution that is paralysing public services and strangling individual initiative, it will have achieved an enormously important change. With the exception of those over-zealous, interfering officials – who no doubt do all they can to frustrate its implementation – it is a blueprint from which everyone will benefit.”
Stephen Asbury of Corporate Risk Systems says: "We have waited long enough for this report, and its publication is now overdue. Whatever its says, we'll still be here providing sensible and proportional health and safety advice and training. Its frustrating that deregulation and lowering of standards in the world's safest country is being used by the coalition as part of a political football match."
In moves presumably intended to pave the way for the Prime Minister’s presentation of the report, a number of newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, are using increasingly divisive language. A comment article published by the Telegraph talks about health and safety laws as “weapons” used to “pursue an impossible object: the elimination of risk from human activity”. The same article summarises that “if the report succeeds in bringing an end to the caution that is paralysing public services and strangling individual initiative, it will have achieved an enormously important change. With the exception of those over-zealous, interfering officials – who no doubt do all they can to frustrate its implementation – it is a blueprint from which everyone will benefit.”
Stephen Asbury of Corporate Risk Systems says: "We have waited long enough for this report, and its publication is now overdue. Whatever its says, we'll still be here providing sensible and proportional health and safety advice and training. Its frustrating that deregulation and lowering of standards in the world's safest country is being used by the coalition as part of a political football match."
Sunday 19 September 2010
The Case for Safety
Originally published in ‘Foundry Trade Journal’ Volume 184, No. 3676, July / August 2010
The United Kingdom has led the way on legislating to provide safe and healthy workplaces since 1802, when the world’s first workplace health and safety law was enacted to protect young people in textile mills. Unbelievably, workplace safety laws pre-date legislation to prohibit slavery; the British Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 made the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire.
A reminder of the dark satanic mills of George III’s Britain and an Empire trafficking humans for profit remind of the progress we’ve made in a couple of hundred years, but many people still think we have some way to go. In the coming weeks, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will likely report that for the year to April 2010, UK workplaces sustained the lowest number of fatalities ever recorded1, but this ‘low’ figure still comprises about a car-load of people every week. And the UK, along with Sweden, is often regarded as the safest country in the world in which to work…
Our journey towards continual improvements in workplace health and safety has been characterized, particularly in recent years by:
Qualified majority voting at European level has tended to increase worker protection laws in the last twenty years. Few business managers welcome increased ‘red tape’ of any variety, whether employment laws, tax laws, or safety laws. However, experience from the world’s workplaces suggests that there is a significant and measurable impact of principal health and safety legislation.
You can research your own countries experiences later, but recent data from the UK and the USA presented here show the magnitude of the ‘improvement’ in tables 1 and 2 below.
Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
Table 1 – Impact of principal health and safety legislation in the UK
Occupational Safety and Health Act 1970
Table 2 – Impact of principal health and safety legislation in the USA
Compensation Culture
It seems that every radio commercial, every newspaper and every hospital waiting room is smothered with advertisements from lawyers touting their trade; “If there’s blame, there’s a claim” is the genus of what most of us have seen.
What is certainly true is that the injured employee (‘the claimant’) has to show that the employer has either:
"What actually happens is they investigate your claim, decide you have a good one, they then auction it to the lawyer who will pay the most for it".
"So you don't get the best lawyer, you get the person who pays the most, therefore probably scrimps the most to win."
"The [British] health service paid out £8bn in five years - only one third went to the claimants, and two thirds went to all those other parties. Now that is really something that should be stopped."
"Money in the health service should be spent on health, not on these things."
- Lord Young, appointed to conduct a review of health and safety in the UK, 14 June 2010
‘Elf & Safety
Most people have heard about the restaurant that banned tooth picks because of ‘elf and safety. Or the pancake race ‘banned’ in case people tripped. Or the ladder which ‘negligently’ failed to display a ‘stop’ sign on the top rung. Even HSE has set up a website to answer some of these absurdities2.
What seems clear is that there are high hazard industries, including foundries, where sensible attention to improve health and safety saves lives and prevents injuries. The challenge for businesses is to know just what is significant…
The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health is the world’s largest membership body for health and safety practitioners with over 37,000 members – including over 14,000 Chartered Health and Safety Practitioners. These can be recognised by the post-nominal letters ‘CMIOSH’ or ‘CFIOSH’. Chartered Members and Fellows of IOSH hold recognised qualifications, and undertake mandatory continuing professional development (CPD) to remain up to date. To retain anyone else to advise your organisation for advice is to risk ‘silly safety’.
Health and Safety Management Systems
Some people think the origins of modern management systems lie with the thoughts and writings of W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993). His popular ‘Plan-Do-Check-Act’ model for continual improvement has slipped into common language, and remains popular in boardrooms.
Published in 1991, and comprehensively revised in 1997, HSE published its seminal publication ‘Successful Health and Safety Management’; commonly known by its catalogue number HSG65. Building on the Deming Wheel (see Figure 1), the model shows how in six steps, any organisation can be successful in workplace health and safety:
Your Prescription for Health and Safety Improvement
1. Convince yourself that incidents and injuries are not inevitable; that with your involvement as a catalyst, your organisation too can be ‘great’ at health and safety. And don’t stop if you’re already doing well – this is a journey, not a destination.
2. Retain the services of a Chartered Member (or a Chartered Fellow) of IOSH. You’ll probably use the services of a Chartered accountant for your books; and a Dentist for your teeth. So a properly qualified and up-to-date safety practitioner is the logical source of advice to help you to focus on the health and safety priorities.
3. Take an hour to read HSG65 (£12.50 from all good book sellers), and make sure that the approach in your enterprise is aligned. When the regulator has provided consistent guidance for almost twenty years, why would you consider anything less?
4. Seek an independent Health and Safety Auditor to review your current performance. Only when you know where your performance may be impaired may you re-focus your endeavours. Health and safety is no accident…
The Programme Paid for Itself…
Stephen Asbury was appointed health and safety manager for an international engineering group with 60,000 employees operating in over thirty countries in 1991; as a part of this responsibility, inheriting a foundry in Yorkshire where standards had fallen to rather low levels.
“Visiting this hell-hole for the first time”, Stephen says, “I had men rolling their sleeves up to show me horrific burns which they wore as a badge of honour”. Stephen continues “Management thought that injuries were inevitable, that training was a luxury, and had seemingly done little or nothing to change the working conditions in many years”.
Working with his (extremely proactive) Chief Executive, Stephen and his team were able to turn the site’s health and safety performance around, and the result four years later was the presentation of a RoSPA Health and Safety Gold Award in 1995.
Stephen summarises the programme - “All it took was sustained leadership, a clear plan, and a determined implementation. Our workers were worth the investment of our time, and the programme paid for itself over five years”.
About the Author:
Stephen Asbury is a Chartered Fellow of IOSH, and Chair of the IOSH Professional Committee. Professionally, he is the Managing Director of Corporate Risk Systems Limited, and Author of the best-selling book ‘Health & Safety, Environment and Quality Audits – A Risk-based Approach’ and over 30 other books and articles.
The United Kingdom has led the way on legislating to provide safe and healthy workplaces since 1802, when the world’s first workplace health and safety law was enacted to protect young people in textile mills. Unbelievably, workplace safety laws pre-date legislation to prohibit slavery; the British Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 made the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire.
A reminder of the dark satanic mills of George III’s Britain and an Empire trafficking humans for profit remind of the progress we’ve made in a couple of hundred years, but many people still think we have some way to go. In the coming weeks, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will likely report that for the year to April 2010, UK workplaces sustained the lowest number of fatalities ever recorded1, but this ‘low’ figure still comprises about a car-load of people every week. And the UK, along with Sweden, is often regarded as the safest country in the world in which to work…
Our journey towards continual improvements in workplace health and safety has been characterized, particularly in recent years by:
- Increased legislation and mandated requirements
- The rise of a compensation culture
- Some trivializing of ‘elf and safety by the media, as myths and poor practice are publicized
- The development of structured means of control and management systems
Qualified majority voting at European level has tended to increase worker protection laws in the last twenty years. Few business managers welcome increased ‘red tape’ of any variety, whether employment laws, tax laws, or safety laws. However, experience from the world’s workplaces suggests that there is a significant and measurable impact of principal health and safety legislation.
You can research your own countries experiences later, but recent data from the UK and the USA presented here show the magnitude of the ‘improvement’ in tables 1 and 2 below.
Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
| Year of inception | 2007 | |
| Fatalities | 651 | 229 |
| Fatality rate / 100,000 workers | 2.9 | 0.8 |
Occupational Safety and Health Act 1970
| Year of inception | 2007 | |
| Fatalities | 13,800 | 5657 |
| Fatality rate / 100,000 workers | 18.0 | 3.8 |
Compensation Culture
It seems that every radio commercial, every newspaper and every hospital waiting room is smothered with advertisements from lawyers touting their trade; “If there’s blame, there’s a claim” is the genus of what most of us have seen.
What is certainly true is that the injured employee (‘the claimant’) has to show that the employer has either:
- Broken a health and safety law enacted to protect them, or
- Been negligent, to the extent where a civil court judge feels it more likely than not that the employer could have taken further reasonable actions to prevent the injury
"What actually happens is they investigate your claim, decide you have a good one, they then auction it to the lawyer who will pay the most for it".
"So you don't get the best lawyer, you get the person who pays the most, therefore probably scrimps the most to win."
"The [British] health service paid out £8bn in five years - only one third went to the claimants, and two thirds went to all those other parties. Now that is really something that should be stopped."
"Money in the health service should be spent on health, not on these things."
- Lord Young, appointed to conduct a review of health and safety in the UK, 14 June 2010
‘Elf & Safety
Most people have heard about the restaurant that banned tooth picks because of ‘elf and safety. Or the pancake race ‘banned’ in case people tripped. Or the ladder which ‘negligently’ failed to display a ‘stop’ sign on the top rung. Even HSE has set up a website to answer some of these absurdities2.
What seems clear is that there are high hazard industries, including foundries, where sensible attention to improve health and safety saves lives and prevents injuries. The challenge for businesses is to know just what is significant…
The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health is the world’s largest membership body for health and safety practitioners with over 37,000 members – including over 14,000 Chartered Health and Safety Practitioners. These can be recognised by the post-nominal letters ‘CMIOSH’ or ‘CFIOSH’. Chartered Members and Fellows of IOSH hold recognised qualifications, and undertake mandatory continuing professional development (CPD) to remain up to date. To retain anyone else to advise your organisation for advice is to risk ‘silly safety’.
Health and Safety Management Systems
Some people think the origins of modern management systems lie with the thoughts and writings of W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993). His popular ‘Plan-Do-Check-Act’ model for continual improvement has slipped into common language, and remains popular in boardrooms.
Published in 1991, and comprehensively revised in 1997, HSE published its seminal publication ‘Successful Health and Safety Management’; commonly known by its catalogue number HSG65. Building on the Deming Wheel (see Figure 1), the model shows how in six steps, any organisation can be successful in workplace health and safety:
- Policy – A clearly expressed document providing direction and a commitment to high standards endorsed by top management
- Organising – An effective management structure with arrangements for delivering the policy, empowered motivated staff, and a positive culture
- Planning and Implementing – Use of risk assessment to identify the priorities and set objectives for improvements
- Measuring performance – Checking as you go provides real-time indicators of progress, and identifies where improvement is needed
- Audit – An independent and systematic appraisal to provide assurance that the systems are working as intended, and providing an alert when they are not3.
- Reviewing performance – Periodic review by top management to ensure the organisation learns from its experiences and applies the lessons
Your Prescription for Health and Safety Improvement
1. Convince yourself that incidents and injuries are not inevitable; that with your involvement as a catalyst, your organisation too can be ‘great’ at health and safety. And don’t stop if you’re already doing well – this is a journey, not a destination.
2. Retain the services of a Chartered Member (or a Chartered Fellow) of IOSH. You’ll probably use the services of a Chartered accountant for your books; and a Dentist for your teeth. So a properly qualified and up-to-date safety practitioner is the logical source of advice to help you to focus on the health and safety priorities.
3. Take an hour to read HSG65 (£12.50 from all good book sellers), and make sure that the approach in your enterprise is aligned. When the regulator has provided consistent guidance for almost twenty years, why would you consider anything less?
4. Seek an independent Health and Safety Auditor to review your current performance. Only when you know where your performance may be impaired may you re-focus your endeavours. Health and safety is no accident…
The Programme Paid for Itself…
Stephen Asbury was appointed health and safety manager for an international engineering group with 60,000 employees operating in over thirty countries in 1991; as a part of this responsibility, inheriting a foundry in Yorkshire where standards had fallen to rather low levels.
“Visiting this hell-hole for the first time”, Stephen says, “I had men rolling their sleeves up to show me horrific burns which they wore as a badge of honour”. Stephen continues “Management thought that injuries were inevitable, that training was a luxury, and had seemingly done little or nothing to change the working conditions in many years”.
Working with his (extremely proactive) Chief Executive, Stephen and his team were able to turn the site’s health and safety performance around, and the result four years later was the presentation of a RoSPA Health and Safety Gold Award in 1995.
Stephen summarises the programme - “All it took was sustained leadership, a clear plan, and a determined implementation. Our workers were worth the investment of our time, and the programme paid for itself over five years”.
About the Author:
Stephen Asbury is a Chartered Fellow of IOSH, and Chair of the IOSH Professional Committee. Professionally, he is the Managing Director of Corporate Risk Systems Limited, and Author of the best-selling book ‘Health & Safety, Environment and Quality Audits – A Risk-based Approach’ and over 30 other books and articles.
Friday 17 September 2010
CRS Double Finalist in Business Awards
Corporate Risk Systems have just received advance notification from the Chair of the judges in the Burton Mail Business Awards 2010 that they are short listed for two prestigious awards. This will be the essence of an article in the Burton Mail on Wednesday 22/9/2010:
CRS is Double-nominated as Finalist in 2010 Business Awards
Leading Health, Safety and Environmental Training and Consultancy Group Corporate Risk Systems (CRS) has been nominated as a Finalist for two business awards. CRS is a finalist in the 'Best Small Business' and the 'Most Effective Environmental or Green Initiative' categories of the Burton Mail Business Awards 2010. The competition is judged by representatives from East Staffordshire District Council, South Derbyshire District Council, Burton College and the Burton Mail newspaper.
CRS Managing Director Stephen Asbury said "We've had a marvellous twelve years developing our company, and to be nominated for not one, but two, business awards at this time feels very special indeed. We're looking forward to the awards dinner at the Pirelli Stadium on 21 October 2010".
CRS is nominated as a finalist for these awards along with an accountancy practice, a security group, an enterprise centre, and an NHS Trust hospital.
Wednesday 15 September 2010
Nebosh Courses
NEBOSH (The National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health) was formed in 1979 as an independent examining board and awarding body with charitable status. We offer a comprehensive range of globally-recognised, vocationally-related qualifications designed to meet the health, safety, environmental and risk management needs of all places of work in both the private and public sectors.
Our qualifications are recognised by the relevant professional membership bodies including the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM ) and the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA).
Who are Corporate Risk Systems?
Whether it is one of our NVQ4, NEBOSH National General Certificate, IEMA , NEBOSH Certificate in Environmental Management or IOSH Managing Safely courses, our tutors deliver a friendly and informative training course where the use of practical exercises, syndicate and group activities are included. Our high pass rates for all of our courses including the NEBOSH and IOSH training courses and our excellent testimonials from our NVQ4 and AIEMA candidates demonstrates that we are providing the correct learning experience where our students come first.
Our aim is to help our students to achieve their full potential and create increased career opportunities in their life through learning and improved qualifications.
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