When you look at the Health and Safety statistics of any organisation, you will probably find that contractors are responsible for the majority of incidents recorded in a year.
The problem in general is that the emerging contractor knows very little about Health and Safety. This lack of knowledge leads to incidents because the proper steps are not taken to address Occupational Health and Safety risks in a suitable manner.
This is why a Health and Safety file is required. I’m now referring to the Safety files that are expected to be compiled, maintained and available by contractors or sub-contractors who provide services on your site.
The required Safety files are an attempt to force a contractor to at least contemplate the risks involved when performing the work he has been contracted to perform and then to put in place mitigation plans. The Health and Safety file is the place where these plans should be found. A lack of Health and Safety knowledge then leads to sub-standard Health and Safety files.
Health and Safety files are a contentious issue and Construction Safety files are probably one of the biggest problem areas.
The average contractor views the Health and Safety file as a one to five page document, and in the majority of cases, I can assure you that this will prove to be inadequate.
A guiding tool to the contents of a Safety file follows.
The file can be divided into the following parts:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Reference Documents
Part 3: Definitions and terminology
Part 4: Roles & Responsibilities
Part 5: Objectives & Targets
Part 6: Planning & Procedures
Part 7: Health & Safety Specification Implementation
Part 8: Application of the Health & Safety Specification
Part 9: Health & Safety Practice
Part 10: Annexure & Addendums
In my following articles I plan to provide more information on what documentation and information should be contained in every section of the Health and Safety file.
Christel Fouche is the Managing Director of Advantage ACT, a Safety, Health, Environmental and Quality (SHEQ) service provider. You can read more SHEQ articles on her blog at christelfouche.com (http://christelfouche.com)
Article supplied by SHEQAfrica.com (http://sheqafrica.com)