The neighbours are having an extension to their house built (Grrr), and the people doing the work appear to have no Personal Protection Equipment at all. Should they have things like hardhats, safety harnesses, at alia? They are at roof-ridge level on a two-storey building now.
Just wondering.
Mind your own business (but have your camera ready).
Bill
:-)
How the hell can Darwinism work with all the nannyism of today?
Exactly.
In the local paper around 6 years ago a Polish builder slipped while doing work on a neighbours roof in Surbiton and slipped off diagonally and went straight through the next doors conservatory roof. He broke his leg and suffered cuts and bruises. I never heard what happened but a simple safety harness might have saved him. Brian
That appears to lead to a host of "Well, maybe, possibly" results.
When I worked in the US in industrial construction, it was absolutely spelld out what, why, where all PPE was required. To the point of absurdity sometimes, it seemed to us who had to abide by it. And then I went to work in Mexico, and watched guys up in the rafters doing cleaning, with harnesses on, but attached to nothing.
The camera is ready, and already has some shots of them on the roof.
It is amazing how much OTT H&S can slow and cost, while basic things get ignored.
In the UK one industrial site that I was involved with went mad on "working at height" - requiring our electricians to wear harnesses when they were working on a scaffold platform where their feet were only 1m from the ground! They simply needed to reach over the top of a 2.1m tall panel to gland off cables coming into it. All a harness did was to prevent them moving sideways or backwards at all, as they had to be kept so short to prevent them hitting the floor if they fell. However, one of our guys was walking behind the building, with the client's maintenance manager, when someone ran across a pipe-bridge with no walkway or railings and was immediately challenged as to whether it was one of our guys - it wasn't and the subject was simply dropped.
Another site was even worse (a bakery around Leicester). I visited a few times to see how our guys were getting on and they were complaining about the requirement for hi-viz vests. It was very hot weather and they were uncomfortable to wear. The only place they were needed was outside the building, on the back road - which would have been fair enough, but the only place they needed to access was a new chiller unit, which was accessed via a door right next to it and completely surrounded by newly installed Armco. There was no need at all for the vests there, but the client refused to relax the rules at all. A year or so later, after the building had been pased back to the client, they completely ignored maintenance rules when they had a problem with the linear oven (about
25m long and bread was conveyed through on a stainless-steel belt as it baked). They were supposed to shut it down, remove all the side panels and wait 8 hours for it to cool. They shut down, did not remove the side panels, waited 4 hours and sent two guys in on the conveyor. It was still very hot, there were raised dividers on the belt, so the guys could not crawl out and they screamed and screamed as they were burnt to death. I found out about that one when an H&SE publication detailing a number events leading to high-value fines crossed my desk.SteveW
Hmm, nowhere in any risk assesment I have seen points out that a safety harness carries it's own risks.
I have often questioned the practice of using PPE as a final solution without regard to the actual risks of using the PPE itself.
Safety harnesses are well known producers of lactic acid incidentally.
AB
Is the scaffolding made of bamboo poles lashed together ?.
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