Risk Assessment

[Ed DuffnerParticipant @edduffner79357]

Um, excuse the flippant question, but how can you have a fractional or decimal fatality?

Ed.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Posted by Ajohnw on 08/08/2016 17:22:31:

I don't think that there is any need to bring in so called professional risk assessment people and in many respects HSE either. The main aspect of risk assessment is that some one does think about risk and documents it. The very fact that the subject has been mentioned will influence how people work. The docs are needed for legal reasons.

Statistics can be very misleading unless all possible factors are included. More companies now equip the people that work for them correctly and also often make sure that people make use of it.

IMHO the last thing you should do is bring in professionals to write risk assessments. Not because I don't agree with RAs, I strongly support them, but they should be done by people who are familiar with the process involved and who will ultimately have to implement any improvements identified. If RA is imposed from outside it will be at best resented, at worst ignored. The law says we are all responsible for safety, employers and employees alike. For a straightforward task, the RA should be no more than 1 side of A4. Some of the telephone directory size documents I've seen in my working life were a waste of time and money, no-one would ever read them.

H&S laws are very rarely prescriptive, they require you to think about hazards, risks and consequences, and to mitigate those which are unacceptable. Some people are not prepared to accept that the risk of something happening is so low, or the consequences so small that no further action is needed, and this is when we get silly so called rules, blamed on the HSE

[Nick WheelerParticipant @nickwheeler]

Posted by Martin Kyte on 08/08/2016 10:54:46:

My definitions.

Risk Management: Look before you leap.

Risk assessment: Some kind of documentation to prove you have looked.

I think you have those definitions back to front.

RAs are a common part of everyday life; it can be as simple as looking both ways before stepping off a curb, checking the temperature of the bath water before you get in, or ensuring that the cat isn't asleep on the top stair when you go for a piss at 03:00. Or at work: ensuring that the object you're about to pick up and carry across to the bench is manageable, secure and that the route is clear; checking that the scaffold you're expected to work on 5 storeys up is secure and properly built; or that you have the necessary PPE to use the chemicals that the job requires. A good RA ought to be a deliberate application of common sense and experience.

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Posted by duncan webster on 08/08/2016 18:51:18:

Posted by Ajohnw on 08/08/2016 17:22:31:

I don't think that there is any need to bring in so called professional risk assessment people and in many respects HSE either. The main aspect of risk assessment is that some one does think about risk and documents it. The very fact that the subject has been mentioned will influence how people work. The docs are needed for legal reasons.

Statistics can be very misleading unless all possible factors are included. More companies now equip the people that work for them correctly and also often make sure that people make use of it.

IMHO the last thing you should do is bring in professionals to write risk assessments. Not because I don't agree with RAs, I strongly support them, but they should be done by people who are familiar with the process involved and who will ultimately have to implement any improvements identified. If RA is imposed from outside it will be at best resented, at worst ignored. The law says we are all responsible for safety, employers and employees alike. For a straightforward task, the RA should be no more than 1 side of A4. Some of the telephone directory size documents I've seen in my working life were a waste of time and money, no-one would ever read them.

H&S laws are very rarely prescriptive, they require you to think about hazards, risks and consequences, and to mitigate those which are unacceptable. Some people are not prepared to accept that the risk of something happening is so low, or the consequences so small that no further action is needed, and this is when we get silly so called rules, blamed on the HSE

I my view Duncan it's a little crack pot to get some one who is not conversant with a particular task to do an RA. Where I have worked it's a function for the direct supervision probably with some discussion.

It's an interesting area broadly speaking. I once saw a survey of jobs in a pretty large factory. In essence it was looking for real jobs as against created ones. Most of the created ones, and there were a lot didn't offer enough work to keep some occupied. The conclusion on why this happens was put down to management – must get some on in to do something without much thought about the actual work content as against adding it some existing persons work load etc.

John

–

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Jon on 08/08/2016 16:44:55:

…

Manufacturing gone down more than 80% we don't produce in this country any more of course its gonna drop.

…

Of course there's a conclusion to be drawn from that too. If the fatality rate dropped from 2.9 per 100000 in 1974 to 0.48 in 2015 because we stopped doing dangerous work then that work must have been, well, dangerous. Six times more dangerous than what we're doing now.

Bearing in mind that we're richer per capita compared with 1974, do we really want to return to the good old days? And if so, why?

Cheers,

Dave

[brickyParticipant @bricky]

When I started work 55 years ago I am sure that the factory acts were posted on most sites that I worked on.These covered health and safety of workers and expected people to have and use common sense.with the decline of industries I noticed a new industry emerging health and safety. Courses were being run at the local college to train for this growing industry.Having employed people in the building industry I was well aware of my responsibility to my employees.An apprentice of mine was due an assesment of H&S the assesor arived to find him working in a domestic kitchen,I was questioned as to why he was not wearing a high vis jacket and helmet and why I did not have a notice displayed on the kitchen door saying that it was a building site and was a hazard.Constructive criticism would have been welcomed .Jobsworth sprang to mind.These are the sort of people that get H & S a bad name.

Frank

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

I have to apply risk assessments every day but my biggest problem is the HS officer you will find on a building site, the company I work for sell very large industrial walk through washing machines and quite often we have to build a new machine before the building is completed otherwise it would be difficult to get it in, the site rules insist you have to wear gloves, have you ever tried to wire up a control panel with gloves on its very difficult to bloody impossible, our machines stand ten feet high and one site insisted we be connected to decelerators in case we fell off the top of the machine, he couldnt be convinced that if one of us fell off we would hit the ground long before the device would be able to slow us down.

Ladders on site are now almost totally banned unless there is absolutely no other way of doing the job, there is a catch 22, you cant use a ladder unless its tied off at the top so how do you climb the ladder to tie it off.

In my view there is safety and then there is pure back side covering.

Martin P

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

We carry out risk assessments everyday. Those who don't tend to get run over, or cut themselves rather badly.

But shouldn't the HSE boys remove the doors from their offices, in case they trap their fingers? Also, No pens/pencils in case they stab themselves, and no computers because of the risk of R S I?

It all comes down to keeping a sense of proportion.

We should all use common sense, but looking at some of the pronouncements Common Sense isn' t that common anymore.

The danger with the box ticking culture is that it trains people not to think.

There are no signs warn drivers about the child about to run into the road without looking, so we keep aware of what is happening around us, and act accordingly.

So we all need to carry on doing our almost sub conscious risk assessments.

PLEASE don't bring the over zealous HSE culture into our hobby; just think what you are doing and act sensibly.

If you are not sure, DON'T until you have checked and taken advice, (Which is what this Forum provides so well)

In Industry HSE does not allow machinery to be operated solo; which is what we all do as a hobby.

(How many of us have a second person standing by in case of an accident?)

Howard

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Risk tolerance is far lower nowadays (apart from cycling IMO)

You couldn't see Portobello beach(Edinburgh) for the mass of bodies on a sunny summers day when I was a nipper. Meanwhile the sewerage works at the end of the beach happily pumped out poops, paper and rubbery things for thousands of us to swim around.

A few years ago they pumped out some raw sewerage by accident (2010ish) and there were Environmental Health dudes camped along the coastline for the entire day up to 3 miles away keeping people from going onto the beaches, lol. It was like an anthrax scare had happened

[Ed DuffnerParticipant @edduffner79357]

It used to be the same at Weston Super Mare, Ady. I remember swimming in brown water there in the 70's and thinking not too much of it because we just didn't know any different. The evolution of H&S awareness has come on a pace.

I was wondering recently how people feel about these mist coolants and if they could be detrimental to health, given they can be set to a fine mist and breathd in?

Ed.

[Adrian JohnstoneParticipant @adrianjohnstone89946]

Apart from the effect of the decline in heavy manufacturing on these figures which I am sure is real, we ought to perhaps congratulate the construction industry which seems to have transformed its record. Historically, it was to be expected that bridge building and tunnel digging would lead to deaths – by one count the Forth Bridge claimed 78 lives (see **LINK**). These days construction has a very strong H&S regime which seems to have really worked.

Personally, I am pretty keen to live a long time in good health, not fade away in my forties racked by an industrial disease as my grandfather did, so I don't begrudge a bit of paperwork and a few jobsworths if it genuinely reduces the sum total of human misery.

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Posted by Ed Duffner on 09/08/2016 08:02:51:

I was wondering recently how people feel about these mist coolants and if they could be detrimental to health, given they can be set to a fine mist and breathd in?

Ed.

When I had a lathe in the garage and other bits and pieces I used to douse things down with wd40 etc and spend a lot of time in there. I developed an odd cough that wouldn't seem to go away. Stopped using it and also minimised the use of oil and it did go away. I can only put this down to next to no ventilation and fumes.

There were several large Heller CNC machines at work. After some years some one noticed that the ceiling some 30ft odd high was coated in oil and dust. Goods inward was close by. more or less in the same area and for most of the year the rather large doors and loading bay area was completely open.

John

–

[Clive IndiaParticipant @cliveindia]

Always a subject to prompt a good response. I have little or no time for safety gurus because, in my experience, they tend to be blinkered people. That said, I have met good safety officers who are trying to get the job completed safely, rather than those who say the only safe way of doing things is not to do it at all.
But….
Risk assessments have merit in that at least someone at least looks at the task with an eye on the risk to safety and then looks at ways of reducing the risk. That must be good, if it is done conscienciously and viewed in the same way.
Generic risk assessments and those done by someone insulated from the real task do not work well.
The safety gurus make risk assessments seem complicated but they are really a very simple thing.

Neil is correct – agricultural accidents top the league. A hands-on industry which is diverse and large with much dangerous tooling. People work very hard, are under pressure to deliver and cut corners. They have little time available to go to seminars on safety. Compare this to desk jockeys who spend a high proportion of their time on wattless pursuits such as team building and focus groups. Ironically, office workers are unable to use a new chair until an instructor has shown them how to adjust it properly!!

Edited By Clive India on 09/08/2016 13:03:04

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Clive,

I will, if I may, quote one of your posts from a previous thread:

"Come on guys – it's a light innit – not as complicated as a hypervapotron.

Plug it in, if it works it lights up. If it don't – throw it away.

Is there anything more to be said?"

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=116400&p=2

**LINK**

No personal offence intended … But I think it highlights the need for Risk Assessment in the home workshop.

MichaelG.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Decided to have an old-fashioned quality shave this morning and didn't bother with any of that Health and Safety nonsense.

Cheers,

Dave

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

The safety thing I reckon I most lack is breathing filter stuff when cutting metal.

A fine metal dust can be seen hanging in the air in a powerful led light when machining metal, especially when I do work on any aluminium

I suppose it's no different from doing wood, just nowhere near as obvious.

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Is the RA process to prevent accidents or to fix the blame after the accident? We can't go around having accidents without someone to blame.

Mike

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Axminster do these for workshop air filtration. If you find the price a bit steep they do sell the filters and it would be no real effort to construct one your self with a couple of fans and a wooden/metal box.

**LINK**

regards Martin

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

LOL I don't suppose any one would use a circuit like this in a lamp but who knows.

As I have had to work on live circuits with sufficient jolts to to hurt or kill at times I have the attitude that familiarity tends to give – if I don't touch it then it can't harm me.

As far as main/ higher jolts go in the house etc and elsewhere I always have my neon test screwdriver around. If it even just glimmers slightly where it shouldn't I know that there is a need to look further, I will know if it's working if it lights up where it should. Depending on that and what it is the next test might be a finger to see if I can feel a tingle.

If I buy something used with a mains plug and lead I always check both ends and look at the actual cable size. Some peoples idea of wiring things like this is absolutely unbelievable. That's why regs get tighter and tighter. They would stop us from fitting plugs if they could. I also check fuse ratings and have various ratings about. They do work if needed.

John

–

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

I think that the thing that winds people up is the paperwork side of the RA every skilled man should have been trained to make an assessment of how to do a task safely. Planning a job is a way of life for a properly trained person, knowing when you should seek advice rather than carrying on with a task you are not sure about is essential.the most dangerous people are the confident ones who think they know what they are doing, best to keep a good distance from them or the HSE will blame you for not stopping them.

Mike

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Michael Poole on 09/08/2016 11:04:24:

I think that the thing that winds people up is the paperwork side of the RA …

.

So … for the practical [wo]man with a home workshop; perhaps we should distinguish 'risk assessment' the intelligent process, from 'Risk Assessment' the gravy-train.

MichaelG.

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by Michael Poole on 09/08/2016 11:04:24:

I think that the thing that winds people up is the paperwork side of the RA every skilled man should have been trained to make an assessment of how to do a task safely.

Quite. The other thing that used to wind me up (no longer due to retirement) was the people less qualified and experienced than myself trying to tell me how to work safely!

Russell.

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Posted by Russell Eberhardt on 09/08/2016 11:53:36:

Posted by Michael Poole on 09/08/2016 11:04:24:

I think that the thing that winds people up is the paperwork side of the RA every skilled man should have been trained to make an assessment of how to do a task safely.

Quite. The other thing that used to wind me up (no longer due to retirement) was the people less qualified and experienced than myself trying to tell me how to work safely!

Russell.

If direct supervision is used to do RA's that shouldn't be a problem in many areas Russel and they should discuss it with the person who is doing the job anyway. Where it might be a problem is in areas such as a production shop. A foreman these days may know very little about what goes on in the area they control and is more likely to be mostly interested in the figures – people, production rate and stock levels etc. Might even be called something else as well now. That sort of area is unlikely to need RA's anyway. It will have been done when some one installed the equipment.

Indirect supervision, managers, directors etc probably wont want to know. That way they can't be blamed. That attitude might also cause them to get some "consultant" in.

John

–

Edited By Ajohnw on 09/08/2016 13:07:35

[Clive IndiaParticipant @cliveindia]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 09/08/2016 09:34:36:

Clive,

I will, if I may, quote one of your posts from a previous thread:

"Come on guys – it's a light innit – not as complicated as a hypervapotron.

Plug it in, if it works it lights up. If it don't – throw it away.

Is there anything more to be said?"

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=116400&p=2

**LINK**

No personal offence intended … But I think it highlights the need for Risk Assessment in the home workshop. MichaelG.

Nice one Michael!
I look forward to seeing the risk assessment for the lamp in your workshop.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Clive India on 09/08/2016 13:08:10:

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 09/08/2016 09:34:36:

…

I look forward to seeing the risk assessment for the lamp in your workshop.

I guess most of us do some form of risk assessment before doing anything in our workshops but has anyone gone as far as writing a formal Risk Assessment for a home workshop?

I wrote one for my Tesla Coil and another to establish my computer(s) Security Policy. In both cases I felt it worthwhile to list all the risks, and what their impact would be, and what I needed to do to mitigate them.

In my workshop I have a Torch, Air Compressor, Milling Machine, Pillar Drill, Bandsaw, Lathe, an assortment of power and hand-tools and a suspicion that the ceiling is asbestos. I have some concentrated Sulphuric Acid, butane, various solvents, strippers, oils, paints, wood and a stock of metal that might fall on me. Although I've mitigated against the possibility of fire, theft, poisoning, noise and accidents, I've not felt it so complicated that it needed to be written down.

I'd definitely do a formal Risk Assessment for the same set-up if I employed someone to work for me. Apart from the injury issues, daytime TV carries lots of "Accident at Work" adverts. Employers who haven't done the paperwork are easy meat to the "No Win, No Fee" brigade. Workers annoyed by Risk Assessments and safety officers tend to forget that some of the risks addressed are legal and financial. They may not realise that their employer is automatically at fault if they don't have a Risk Assessment.

Dave

[Author]

Posts