March is slips, trips and falls month. A company email suggests I visit the HSE website.

Apparently it’s small refurb jobs where a lot of the problems are. Photos on the website showing ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots from a domestic refurbishment job illustrate this perfectly. The before shots show heaps of materials and rubbish and dodgy access. Apparently an inspector dropped by unannounced, served an enforcement notice and hey presto! The after shots show they got their house in order.

So sending the inspectors round works. Yet the message from the government is that there will be no more cash for inspectors. The new chair of the Health and Safety Commission, Judith Hackitt, was quoted recently saying the industry has to manage itself.

That’s all well and good if you’re working for a big company. But for the jobbing builder working on next door’s kitchen extension, it’s a different proposition.

The HSE knows this and is carrying out 1,000 inspections on refurbishment sites in February. But it doesn’t have the resources to keep a regular eye on things.

More than half of construction deaths last year were on refurbishment jobs. Will HSE’s latest campaign improve that situation? About as likely as next door’s builder going home after a hard day’s graft and deciding to surf the HSE website.

Source

Construction Manager