That was the response I got when I phoned the emergency number to notify the local water company about a hazard that one of their contractors had left on a road not far from where I live.
It was a bright sunny Friday afternoon in April 2011 approximately 1.30 p.m. and I was standing on the junction of a road looking at a hole on the road that is big enough for all sorts of things to drop or fall into; car wheels, bicycle wheels, men, women, children, animals – the list goes on.
I had telephoned the emergency number indicated, which has connected me to the South East Water call centre. Not as you would expect, the contractor on whose sign the number was displayed.
The Call Centre Customer Service Adviser first asked me for my address and account number! Perhaps I should explain and for regular readers it will be no surprise to learn that I was out running and so would not have my account number with me, not that it would have done any good anyway because I don’t live anywhere near junction. Anyway once I had got through that I did not want to talk about my account but to report a dangerous situation that their contractor had left for the weekend – at this point do remember what the time is, 1.30 p.m.
I recently wrote a blog about contractors putting people at risk by their actions i.e. parking on the pavement. This is an example of contractor’s inaction putting people and their property at risk in other words contractors being negligent. It might interest you to know it doesn’t end there because not only would the contractor Clancy Docwra and their employees be held accountable, so would South East Water if there had been an accident. Or should I call it incident? Because that is what it will be if there is a known hazard that they have done nothing about.
Anyway back to the phone call, which took about five minutes, the Customer Service Adviser finally managed to locate the point that I was talking about. Of course there was no record of any work being completed in the area, which leads me on to another rant. Why can’t these companies communicate with their own departments? This work had been going on for over three months with multiple examples of flouting the Health and Safety legislation – more another time, I have the pictures.
Eventually the Customer Service Adviser had all the information and thanked me then said (you guessed it) “Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused”. Job done she has said that classic mollifying statement and can forget all about it now. I guess that’s exactly what she did because when I ran out along that route two days later nothing had been done about the hazard.
A friend of mine saw my last blog and asked who to contact to complain, his response to my answer of ‘The contractor’ was “the contractors won’t give a fig” and unfortunately he’s right. The bigger the contractor, the less interest they appear to have in actually looking after the safety of the members of the public who they and their staff are putting at risk of harm.
It was still there!
At 09.30 the following Sunday morning (two days or forty-four hours later) I really could not believe what I saw when I approached the junction. Not only had no one done anything about the hazard but because the action of the vehicles passing over the metal plates, they had moved making the situation was even worse. It takes a microsecond for an incident to occur and as mentioned above the injury damage to anyone could have been catastrophic, possibly even life threatening yet all these organisations and their staff were clearly prepared to ignore this hazard and the associated potential risks involved because:
- The people actually doing the work wanted to knock off early on a Friday.
- The people actually doing the work couldn’t be bothered to properly make the area safe.
- The contractor didn’t monitor the actions of their staff to ensure that they complied with the relevant Health and Safety legislation (believe me there is a lot of it).
- The contractor had not effectively informed or instructed their staff in the appropriate safe method of working (otherwise they would not have left the area in that condition).
So what should the various companies do?
It starts with the company who are having the work done, in this case South Eastern Water who should assess the risks involved in completing the task that they want to do, in this sort of activity there are potentially a lot. Once they have done that, they ask their contractor (Clancy Docwra) to provide Risk Assessments and Method Statements to show how they plan to complete the task while keeping the likelihood of anyone or anything being harmed whether that is an employee or a third party – member of the public.
The easy bit.
That’s the easy bit because it can be done from behind a desk – they are written documents. However once the work starts everyone involved from the person with the shovel in his hands to the Chief Operating Officer (whoever is the most senior person in the company) is responsible for making sure that the work is completed according to the method statement. Now this is generally the responsibility of the health & safety manager of organisations like this as well as the site manager/foreman. It is the responsibility of the site manager/foreman to make sure that work is completed safely and that no-one is put at risk of harm, it is the responsibility of the health & safety manager to make sure that the site manager/foreman does. I suggest that in this situation both of them failed.
That said it starts with inducting and training all the people in the organisation sufficiently that they understand their individual responsibilities and actually apply them, the best way is to encourage a culture of safe working, rather than insisting that everyone fills in loads of unnecessary forms that only prove that they know how to fill forms in. Followed by monitoring at all levels to ensure that everyone in the organisation actively applies safe practices so that they become a way of working life. This means that even the lowliest employee has the confidence and support of the most senior person to challenge anyone in the organisation if they are acting in an unsafe manner.
Health and safety is a shared responsibility and although the last employee in the line or that member of the public should take care not to put themselves at risk of danger, there is a whole line of people who are meant to make sure that they don’t have to.
Personally I find it incredible that any normal person thinks it is alright to leave anything in such a dangerous condition, particularly on a busy thoroughfare where roads, footpaths and cycle-paths converge.
As a business owner or manager only by making sure that you and your employees are following the instruction that they have been given can you be assured that all the people who could be affected by their actions or omissions will not be harmed by the activities of your organisation.
Are you safe?
Can you be certain that the activities of your organisation do not put anyone at risk of harm? Harm from injury in the case of an accident or harm from financial penalties or compensation claims in the case of negligence?
What to do!
Be sure to contact us at Positive Health and Safety for a free review of the safety of your business.
Funny, the sort of contractor you are referring would probably say that H&S is just commonsense, then they do something as dumb as that! No telling some people, except by bringing them up short when they do something so not common sensical! As a professional, you really do need to make an effort during your 8 hours at work and think about the impact of your presence on others. Once home, do what you like if it only hurts yourself.
I agree with andy