Guest blog – Milan Hilton

Milan Hilton returns with a second installment of his guest blog and this time he reveals how a knife-wielding hoody made him realise how he could learn from the lessons he teaches every day.

Physician, heal thyself!

_{Luke, Ch 4 V 3}

I’m not normally one for quoting the Bible. Usually, I’ll restrict my ‘chapter and verse’ homilies to health and safety issues, not The Good Book, but today I’ll make an exception as I recall a situation where, if things had turned out differently, I’d have been without a prayer…

Like so many things that go pear-shaped I began with the best intentions. I was leading a course for mhl support in the East End that called for a crack-of-dawn start, so I thought I’d get on top of the job by traveling down from The Midlands, the evening before. That way, I thought, I’d be fresh and alert and altogether more interesting than I’d be if I caught the morning ‘red eye’ and turned up smeared with Virgin Trains ketchup. As it was, I’d had a couple of hours to concentrate on my course, which was about lone workers, the unique circumstances and risks they often face and the duties of care owed to them by employers.

It wasn’t an easy journey. I was toting an overnight bag, a slide projector and the ubiquitous laptop, so walking the length of Platform 7 at Euston and schlepping through the crowds on The Underground wasn’t the most fun I’d ever had… But I thought about the benefits that would derive from my personal act of self-sacrifice – fresh, alert, blah-blah-blah etcetera – and I soldiered stoically on.

I found myself on Limehouse Station, off the Commercial Road, at just after nine o’clock. It was dark and I had no idea where I was going. Two other people were on the platform and I approached one of them, a well-dressed young man who gave me directions to my hotel. There had been another guy, but I’d decided against him. He was wearing a hoody and a slightly vacant look and it struck me that he might not be amenable to even a polite request for assistance.

So it was that I headed for my destination. Almost immediately, I found myself in the sort of gloomy, threatening, graffiti besmirched underpass that the makers of ‘Lock, Stock’ would have added gladly to their list of intimidating locations.

Remember Neil Diamond? At the risk of showing my age, he once wrote a song called “I Am I Said’ that had a line I particularly liked: ‘I’m not a man who likes to swear, but I never cared for the sounds of being alone.’ Well Neil, if you’re reading this (and I know you’re an avid reader of SHP’s Guest Blogs!), I’m here to tell you that the sounds of being alone are a Beautiful Noise compared to the sounds of a hoody’s footsteps (yes, it was him), behind you on a lonely, dark walkway. Being ‘A Solitary Man’ would have suited me better than ‘Hello Again, Hello’ because I caught, in the lamplight, a glimmer in hoody’s hand that I took at once to be a knife.

Oo-er, you might think. At the time, I thought something altogether more descriptive.

What did I do? Well, recalling all the advice I’d given to countless delegates on innumerable courses over God knows how many years, and realizing I’d ignored all of it, I called upon all of my worldly experience – and legged it, clinging to my overnight bag whilst my laptop and projector furled and unfurled in my wake, like (not-so) Superman’s cape. Knife-wielding hoody? He legged it after me.

Quite how this sorry tale might have ended, I shudder to think; but I got lucky. I found myself next to a haulier’s yard in which a large tattooed man was filling up his cement mixer. I ran through the double steel gates, to his side, and sanctuary of a sort.

All’s well that end’s well, I suppose, and I can laugh about this story now. But, if not for Big Ged and his cement mixer, who knows what would have happened? The moral of this tale (there’s always a moral) is this: ladies and gentlemen, let’s practice what we preach! The nature of our job means that we often find ourselves in ‘lone worker’ situations and while we’re extolling the virtues of risk assessment to others, we’d do well to apply the rules to our own working lives.

Like the man said: ‘let’s be careful out there!’ Until next time, keep smiling!

Milan is Training Manager at mhl support, part of the Bibby Group.

milan.hilton@mhlsupport.com
www.mhlsupport.com

Editorial blog: Excess all areas? I think not

I have to say, I am intrigued as to how David Cameron is actually going to make good his promises to rid the UK of its “excessive” and “over-the-top” health and safety regulations. How exactly is he going to round up that horse, manhandle it back into the stable, and slide the lock firmly back into place, I wonder?

The likely answer is that he won’t do any such thing. Sure enough, he’ll probably root out some minor, low-key sets of rules to abolish, which nobody will really miss, and whose repeal will enable him to claim he’s a man of his word. But he’s not going to take a scissors to the statute book.

IOSH, in its response to the Conservative leader’s plans, emphasised that the 65, or so, laws enforced by the HSE that have come into force since Labour took power in 1997, include some crucial pieces of legislation – for example, on controlling the risks from asbestos, noise, lead, and major-accident hazard sites.

While Cameron is clearly jumping on the bandwagon of media-fomented disaffection with health and safety in the hope of winning votes, he knows that getting rid of such important safeguards would ultimately be political suicide.

Consequently, he’ll be looking for other ways to fulfil his pledge to reduce the “burden” of regulation and legislation, and this presents a great opportunity for the health and safety profession to influence and educate him on how best to do so. Practitioners know that the key messages to get across are “better regulation, not less”, “more effective enforcement, not lighter”, and “a proportionate response to risk, not negligence”. We must make sure that Mr Cameron and his colleagues get their information and advice from those on the front line and not from the front pages of the popular press.

And while I’m on the subject of publications that appeal, I’d like to thank the thousands of you who took the time to complete our recent readership survey. The whole SHP team and I are pleased and proud to remain your first choice for health and safety news and information, and delighted that so many of you rate our coverage and service so highly.

Tina Weadick – Editor

Guest blog – Jamie Cliffe

Jamie Cliffe has more than 20 years’ experience within the petroleum downstream environment, and is currently managing director of safety training provider SMTS. In his blog he talks about a recent trip to India, which has resulted in SMTS arranging its first ever training course in the country.

Jamie Cliffe’s Safety Passport

Companies dealing with high-risk operations are increasingly looking to match international best practice. In recent years this has made working in health and safety, dare I say, rather glamorous! We all know about health and safety passports, well for me, being MD of a health and safety training company has given me reason to use my traditional one – a lot.

In recent months I’ve visited Ghana and South Africa and I’ve just returned from a trip to India. It was my first visit to that country, and the subject of this, my first travel blog.

I was invited to New Delhi by Habir Singh, who has a background in health and safety training having worked with a number of providers. He wanted to discuss setting up a division of my training company, SMTS, in India, with a global feel, a  New Delhi address, Indian tutors ultimately, and course fees payable in rupees.

It was not a project to be undertaken lightly. The cost of courses has to be so much lower in India, which makes it a difficult market, but it’s also a growing one. India is the only company in the world, which has seen growth in 2009 – up by 8%.

It’s a happening, fascinating place.

In the two days I was there I spent hours being driven round by Habir looking for suitable hotel venues in which to hold the first courses. The first thing that struck me was the extraordinary contrast between wealth and poverty that typifies India. One moment you’re negotiating pot-holed roads and pick-pocketing monkeys, and the next you’re driving past palm trees, walking into marble floored halls, with parakeets flying over your head and tranquil gardens with ladies under parasols sipping Darjeeling tea from china cups.

The second thing that I noticed was the vast amount of construction and redevelopment going on everywhere.  Office blocks, apartments and shopping are being built all over the place. One spur for this is that New Delhi is to host the Commonwealth Games in 2010 and there is also a bid for it to host the Olympics.

Construction is one of the most dangerous industries, of course, and it’s fair to say that health and safety standards in India are sketchy, with work practises not always up to UK standards. That’s definitely changing though, because international companies expect certain standards before they’ll trade. I must say I wasn’t looking to see if the abundance of construction workers were wearing the right PPE. It’s the New Delhi roads that, on the surface, seem to present to greatest safety hazard to unsuspecting westerners.

New Delhi is a call centre capital of the world so it operates on a 24-hour clock. This means that the roads at night are often busier than during the day.  And busy is an understatement if ever there was one. Rickshaws, motorbikes, vans and cars all fight for space. There is no system and no right of way. Which makes negotiating a Delhi roundabout…erm…entertaining! Everyone ploughs on, with ten vehicles to a space only really large enough for two. Much beeping of horns ensues, but the truly astonishing thing is that somehow everyone sorts themselves out. These hooted messages mean something, clearly, and it’s not anger or aggression, as it might be in the UK. There is no road rage in India, remarkably.

This is just one of the things that will make working in India such an enjoyable experience. Our first course is scheduled for 25 January and I shall be going back in the New Year to set up the company, get the flow of courses going and meet with companies who may wish to enroll more recruits.

I can’t wait.

Jamie Cliffe
jamie.cliffe@smtsltd.com

Guest blog – Roy Jackson

Roy is a chartered member of IOSH and works for animal feed manufacturer, BOCM PAULS Ltd, as an engineer/ health & safety co-ordinator. In this blog he describes the experience of taking part in a training exercise with the Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service.

Learning from each other

The opportunity to see health & safety in another work environment doesn’t arise often so when I was contacted this year by the Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service to see if they could carry out a training exercise on our premises I willingly obliged.

On the evening of the drill, a search and rescue exercise involving fire-fighters wearing gas-tight suit, the first to arrive was the Incident Response Unit, a large curtain-sided vehicle carrying specialist equipment. This was closely followed by three pumps, a number of utility vehicles, and a hazmat officer. The number of people in the drill totalled 25.

The scenario

The imaginary scenario involved an animal feed mill targeted by a group intent on contaminating the food chain. It was supposed that two employees had come into contact with the contaminant and were unaccounted for in the building.

From the minute the fire and rescue service arrived on site the risk- assesment process became apparent: the positioning of the vehicles (proximity to the building, proximity to other traffic, environment conditions, drainage, etc), additional lighting, route planning between vehicles and the drill area. I was informed by the hazmat officer that facilities were now on site to enable contaminant testing and, if necessary, contact available with a team of scientists could be contacted to identify the material.

A risk assessment had been drawn up by the fire and rescue service for the drill, and all staff were briefed. I was issued a copy and the control measures read like safety instructions. This was exactly how a HSE inspector, on a recent visit to one of our sites, stated how they should appear.

The service’s safety officer carried out an analytical risk assessment of the incident, stepping in to inform staff of developing hazards. I requested a copy of his risk assessment, and he duly obliged. The format was different again; whereas the previous assessment started by looking at the task, then identifying the hazard, this analytical risk assessment listed the hazards as they appeared, and then followed the standard risk-assessment structure. What was excellent about the format was that the ‘severity rating’ the ‘likelihood rating’, and the explanation/scoring of risk, were all contained on one page.

And so to the search and rescue; the wearers of the ‘gas-tight suits’ only have 20 minutes to find and recover the casualty, de-contaminate and disrobe.  I knew where the casualties (plastic dummies) were, as I helped position them. I also knew they were extremely heavy and would need two fire-fighters to be recoverd. It would have been interesting to see the manual-handling techniques applied when wearing such a large suit. In due course, both fire-fighters emerged dragging the casualty out to safety. Next to the decontamination tent, itself controlled by a member of the team who ensured all fluids were contained, cleaning solutions pumped in, and liquids removed as controlled waste. On exiting the decontamination tent the suits were bagged, which is not dissimilar to the procedures involved in asbestos removal.

A debriefing followed the exercise and the incident commander gave his views on how the drill had gone, and checked that no staff had sustained injury. He then voiced his observation that both ‘gas-tight suit’ wearers need to prepare themselves together. The entry-control officer suggested communications needed to be improved, owing to the noise from the plant. Others commented on dosing controls during decontamination and the security of the decontamination tent.

The importance of feedback

How often do we get feedback from those carrying out a task whether our risk-assessments are suitable? In reality do we check to see if it’s possible to complete the task as we perceived, and do we encourage feedback on our risk assessments and safety instructions?

I was recently contacted by sixth-form pupils who are being taught a new subject called science in society, which includes health & dafety. They wanted to learn more about Health and Safety at Work etc Act, The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regs, PUWER, COSHH, and others relevant to our industry. They requested information on what laws and regulations are used by our organisation, how these regulations are monitored, the hazards involved, how risk assessments are completed, and what safety constraints are imposed on us.

I am now aiming to make a bespoke safety film specific to our industry with university students enabling them to practice their media skills. It will result in a training aid that out staff can relate too.

Roy Jackson CMIOSH

Editorial blog – Competence conundrum

Health and safety is full of ‘grey areas’. These exist to help businesses and managers retain freedom of choice on how they interpret the demands of law.

Approved codes of practice help remove some of the greyness, but still people choose to focus on and argue about the interpretation of words instead of focusing on the reason for the legislation being there in the first place. The same debate is now taking place over the word ‘competence’.

Recently, while training, I asked whether the term competence meant “all-knowing”, and exactly what was an agreed level? The HSE consults with industry professionals about changes to legislation, but that did not convince my audience that competence is defined by our industry’s own experience and perception of best practice.

When you employ someone, you look at their CV, where you would expect to find a mix of training and certification. For specialist jobs you might appoint an agency, and you want an agency where the staff constantly update their knowledge. The same is true of a project team – you need the best to be the best.

What’s clear from the IOSH Salary and Attitudes Survey is that increasing numbers of OSH professionals have growing remits, often including fire safety, occupational health, environment, facilities management and others. It would be unusual to find someone completely competent in all of these areas.

This is why IOSH puts such emphasis on continuous professional development (CPD), because learning and personal advancement help us keep people free from harm and do our jobs better.

We are moving towards regulation of our profession – something the HSE, other regulators, and members of government now welcome. According to the survey, 81 per cent of employed OSH professionals and 79 per cent of consultants say they, too, support accreditation.

The support is there, so it’s now up to all of us to reach a level of competence and ensure we maintain it. Only by recognising true competence and working with those who value it will we see change for the better.

Nattasha Freeman
IOSH president

Guest blog – Milan Hilton

mhl Support training manager, Milan Hilton, is our latest guest blogger. Milan travels up and down the country providing safety training, and intends to use this blog to share some of his more unusual experiences.

MILAN: on Dealing with a Pain in the Class and the importance of shutting stable doors before…

By way of introduction, let’s get my name out of the way shall we? No, it’s not made up and no, I’m not related to Paris, thank God. Anyhow, what’s in a name? ‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’, as The Bard said.

But he never had to make a hotel reservation. You try calling the Manchester Hilton and telling them you’re Milan Hilton. Complete confusion always ensues, and I don’t even get staff discount. As a professional, managing the training function at mhl Support, delivering courses and conducting 1-2-1 sessions all over the country, I get to see a lot of hotel rooms. And raise a lot of receptionists’ eyebrows.

My name has had its repercussions at work, too. Delivering a course in Manchester, I had a group of eighteen people – the usual mix of earnest enthusiasts and bored-rigid (until I weave my magic, obviously ☺) delegates, (who were attending on sufferance). One fellow in particular was shaping up to be a first-rate pain in the class.

The course was Health and Safety for Managers and Mr. Pain was not impressed. He huffed and puffed and rolled his eyes alarmingly. At one point, his irritation boiled over. He said haughtily: ‘I’m not sure if I should be here at all. You see, I have a background in manufacturing.’ The implication was, ‘and you obviously don’t, so what can you tell me that I don’t already know?’

I recognised this as a symptom of the curse of my name. He’d obviously concluded that, with a moniker like mine, the closest I’d ever been to an industrial process was when the silver spoon was surgically removed from my mouth. (Leaving in its place a lovely Black Country accent. My name and Lenny Henry’s voice… See what I’m up against?)

I digress. So I resolved to collar Mr. Pain in the coffee break. He was bigger than me. ‘So what can you teach me?’ I asked, trying to make myself look and sound like Dirty Harry’s brother from Wolverhampton: (‘do yow feeyul luckay, punk?’) He said nothing. Calmly, I continued. ‘I was in manufacturing for 28 years’, I told him. ‘I was 21 years with Chubb in Wolverhampton and I ended up being one in four people in charge of all the production on site. I’ve personally done almost every job you can think of in manufacturing. Welding’, I said, by way of example. ‘Have you done any welding?’
‘Er, no…’
‘Ah’, said I, thoughtfully. ‘And I used to run the paint shop. A million pounds worth of automated electropheretic state-of-the-art production line for optimum degreasing and painting…’
‘Oh’, he said, examining his shoes. Mission accomplished.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m not a big head by nature. So, much as I was tempted to give him both barrels, at that juncture, I backed off. Every now and then it’s important to establish your credentials with your audience, and this had been one of those occasions. When it happens, it’s important to make your point without attracting the attention of other members of the group – that would never do – but it was paramount that Mr. Pain knew I’d been there, seen it, done it and grown out of the T-shirt, and that I had something to say that could help him to do his job better.

He’d picked on the wrong guy, from the wrong firm! All of us at mhl have at least one thing in common, besides hands-on experience in our fields of expertise: passion. (I hate the word, but can you think of a better one?) We’re the kind of people that never tire of learning, of looking for ways to do things better. On the journey, like many trainers, I’ve amassed plenty of letters after my name and in the past six years I’ve been awarded ample certificates to paper my office.  I’m not in the Training business for plaudits, though, nice as it is to receive them. I’m in it because I believe in training. Often, sadly, a customer engages me after some incident or other has exposed a skills gap. Bluntly, in too many cases, somebody has to get hurt before I get called in. That’s depressing.

And that’s the key message of this, my inaugural blog: lock the stable door before the horse bolts. It hurts less.

It’s 8.40 now, and I’m twenty minutes away from delivering the IOSH ‘Managing Safely’ course here at mhl Head Office in Newcastle, Staffordshire. Hopefully, there’ll be no Mr. (or Mrs.) Pain to deal with. If there is, I’m ready: ‘go ahead, make my day…’ In the nicest possible way, of course!

Thanks for reading my first attempt at a blog. I’ll be posting at regular intervals and plan to share some of my more unusual experiences. I’d love to get your feedback, so until next time, keep smiling!

Milan Hilton
milan.hilton@mhlsupport.com
www.mhlsupport.com

Editorial Blog – The fight goes on

It’s not going to be easy, you know. Implementing the HSE’s new strategy for it, I mean. I have to admit that it’s really rather clever to devise a plan of work in which others have the lion’s share of the effort – particularly in terms of tasks and issues that have hitherto proved the most difficult, tedious, and frustrating to address. But to be fair, it is now accepted by more or less all stakeholders that the Executive simply never will have sufficient resources to regulate every workplace, enforce every breach of the law, and protect every person by itself. We all, as Judith Hackitt has said, have a part to play.

But just who are ‘we’? Has this new strategy – and all the planning, and consultation, and roadshows, and face-to-face discussions that went into it – really convinced a whole new division of contributors to buy in to the health and safety ideal, or is it just the same, old-faithful cast – organisations and stakeholders signing up to ‘be a part of the solution’ who, let’s face it, always have been and always will be part of it?

While it was good to see the likes of the TUC, the Local Government Association, IOSH, the EEF, and many others formalise their commitment to the laudable aims of the strategy, it was impossible to  ignore the sense of déjà-vu and ghosts of strategies past (Revitalising, Securing Health Together, 2010 and beyond, anyone?)

However, my outlook changed a few weeks after the launch of the strategy when the provisional fatal injury figures for 2008/09 were released, showing that the number of people killed at work in Britain dropped to a record low. While this is by no means ‘job done’, it is an extremely positive and encouraging indication that the HSE and other stakeholders committed to improving health and safety in this country are on the right track.

As our July issue front cover star, Napoléon Bonaparte, once said, “victory belongs to the most persevering” and none has been as tenacious as the UK health and safety profession. Keep the good work up to keep the statistics going down.

Tina Weadick
SHP Editor

Guest Blog – Katherine Wilson

Introducing a Practitioner Blogspot – NUMed

Who am I?

I’m the Deputy Head of Safety at Newcastle University.  I work in the Newcastle University Safety Office with a small team of safety professionals and specialist Fire Safety , Biological, and Radiation advisors.

What is NUMed?

Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia or NUMed is going to be brand new international branch campus of Newcastle University. The thinking behind this is to deliver and award Newcastle University degrees in medicine and biomedical science to international students at the point of demand. The University plan is for the new campus to be ready to teach medical students at the start of the 2011/2102 academic year.

Why a blog?

The idea is to have an electronic diary update about the project on the SHP website to share our experience of setting up a campus abroad. The updates will become more regular as the project gets underway.

Whilst most of us have never had to think about the issues of working abroad, we hope that colleagues will identify with a project that is new and exciting in terms of health and safety. I’m sure that most safety practitioners will say that everyday is different.  It’s just that this is very different for us.

When the announcement was made that NUMed was going ahead this led to a flood of questions we need to address:

•    What are the timescales going to be?
•    Where is it going to be built?
•    What does Malaysian health and safety law say?
•    How are we going to apply our safety management system in Malaysia?

All these questions will be answered in various blog updates.

The Team here are used to advising on all sorts of safety issues relating to medical teaching and research as the University has a Medical Faculty in Newcastle. We also routinely work with the multi site issues and staff and students travelling abroad. This gives us as solid starting point.

We’re really at the very start of the project and there isn’t anything substantial in place yet so we have a fresh canvas to work from.

So what’s the safety plan so far?

The Director of Safety and Safety Office staff have been to a seminar with the University solicitors and the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) on international work and we’re now in the process of gathering background information. At University level, various project groups are being set up which safety will feed into.

The University is having an external health and safety audit at the end of April 2009. This is the HASMAP standard which is the norm for the Higher Education sector.

One of the objectives given to the auditor is to investigate whether the University safety management system covers all University activities now and in the foreseeable future including business abroad and to make recommendations and advise on corrective actions.

What to expect next?

Look out for a blog update for news on progress with the project.

Katherine Wilson
BA(Hons)CMIOSH MISTR

Welcome to the SHP blog

This is the official blog of the Safety & Health Practitioner (SHP) magazine, which is published monthly and received by all members (around 35,000) of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), the UK’s largest organisation for individual health and safety professionals (IOSH is not responsible for any content on this blog).

We will be regularly updating this site with guest blogs. If you are interested in contributing, or have any suggestions please email shpeditor@ubm.com