Working at Height Training

Working at height training is critical as trips and falls within business remains one of the biggest causes of major injuries and fatalities. The most common causes include falls from ladders, roofs and through weak surfaces.

The definition of ‘Work at height’ is working anywhere; if there were no measures in place, a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury (for example, a fall off a ladder when you are working on a roof).

Your responsibilities?

As an employer, you are responsible for ensuring that all work carried out by your employees has been carefully planned, looking at the risks involved. These should then be measured using a risk assessment and method statement to ensure that you are doing everything possible to manage the risk by adopting the avoid, prevent and minimise rule.

Do’s and don’ts of working at height

Do….

• Ensure that when working at height, there is a safe route to and from ground level.
• Try to do as much of the work required from ground level.
• Ensure all equipment is suitable and maintained.
• Ensure extra precautions are taken when working near weak surfaces.

Don’t…

• Overload ladders refer to all mechanical information that is provided to ensure the machinery is fit for purpose.
• Overreach on ladders or stepladders
• Rest a ladder against weak surfaces, e.g. glazing or plastic gutters.
• Use ladders or stepladders for strenuous or heavy tasks; only use them for light work of short duration (a maximum of 30 minutes at a time)

Get your people working at height trained.

Book them onto a  Working At Heights E-Learning training program to protect yourself from prosecution and keep your people safe from trips and falls.

Our E-learning courses can be taken on-site, which is very easy to do and very economical. You can try one for FREE to see the quality.

CDM Construction Phase Plan

Know your responsibilities

As potential Contractors under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, you need to be aware of your responsibilities. The CDM Regulations require all construction projects to have a construction phase plan (CPP), you will need to ensure this is in place before any works commence.

Buy CDM construction phase plan template

You will need to produce a construction phase plan describing how you will manage the various safety aspects of the works. The Managing Director in conjunction with the Supervisor shall be responsible for the preparation and maintenance of secured contracts Health and Safety documentation. The Site Supervisor shall co-ordinate the activities of all operatives to ensure they comply with the construction phase plan including contract Health and Safety requirements and legislation, plus check on the provisions of information and training of all employees, where appropriate, as well as subcontractor’s health and safety, when appointed.

When/if acting as Principal Contractor the following protocol will be adopted:

• Develop and maintain a Construction Phase Plan as required by The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015
• Through on-site management ensure that every contractor complies with the rules set out in the health and safety plan.
• Ensure co-operation between all contractors;
• Taken steps to ensure that only authorised persons are allowed onto the construction site area.
• Ensure that the particulars of the F10 Notification are displayed in a prominent location on the site where they can be read by any person working on the project;
• Keep the up-to-date with any information required to go into the health and safety file;
• Oversee and ensure compliance with Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER).
• Monitor and ensure all work is carried out in accordance with approved/agreed Risk Assessments and Method Statements and ensure that staff and sub-contractors are appropriately qualified/certified to carry out the work;
• Undertake regular site inspection and feed forward to regular toolbox talks with contract staff and sub-contractors.
• Manage the interface between the construction and the site operations to ensure minimum disruption to operations.

If your looking for help with the Construction Phase Plan and purchasing templates get in touch

What is a risk assessment

A risk assessment is to enable you to identify sensible control and measures for risks within your workplace.

Risk Assessments are not meant to create huge amounts of work for anyone in the company but should be there to ensure the safety of you and your workforce. You are likely to already have a process in place to identify risks and how they should be dealt with. A risk assessment is just a document to have all the information in one place.

How to assess the risks in your place of work:

• Identify the hazards
• Decide who might be harmed and how
• Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions
• Record your significant findings
• Review your assessment and update if necessary

Many companies who are confident they understand the process and the risks involved can complete these themselves. You don’t have to be a H&S expert.

When thinking about your risk assessment, remember:

• A hazard is something that could cause harm, for example electricity, chemicals, working from ladders, an open drawer etc
• The risk is the probability, high or low, that somebody could be harmed by these and other hazards, together with an indication of how serious the harm could be

The process of identifying hazards and evaluating the risks can be delivered systematically using well-established templates and the knowledge of people with hands-on experience. 

We have several risk assessments available to buy. The cost of one of our risk and method statements is less than half an hour of your writing time.

They have taken us more than a day to write each one; however, we sell many, making them very affordable.

The documents arrive in word format to allow you to adjust them to suit your site and circumstances.

Why not see our layout below to see if it is something you could work with.

Risk assessments to buy

Covid 19 Risk Assessment & Method Statement

Infection Control Risk Assessment & Method Statement

Litter Picking and Sweeping Risk Assessment & Method Statement

Mobile Tower Scaffold Safe Operating Procedure

Review more risk and method statements

Top Tips for Manual Handing

Did you know Manual handling causes over a third of all workplace injuries?

Top Tips for Manual Handling. These injuries can include pain and injuries to arms, legs and joints, and repetitive strain injuries of all varieties.

Manual handling covers a wide variety of activities including lifting, pushing, pulling, lowering and carrying. If any of these tasks are not carried out correctly there is a risk of injury.

Here are the top tips to make sure you ensure you handle correctly:

• Keep your back straight and bend your knees.
• Lift with your legs and body weight.
• Use handles or lift aids where appropriate.
• Have a good grip on the load.
• Stand close to the load and face the direction you intend to move.
• Lift load as close to the center of your body as possible.
• Lift smoothly without Jerking.
• Avoid lifting, side bending and carrying loads with one hand.

If you need any help with Manual Handling why not visit our site:

Manual Handling Elearning

Manual Handling Training Presentation 

Manual Handling Risk Assessment

More top tips for manual handling can be discovered in our training programs.

Construction Site Safety Documents

Setting up a construction site and making sure that you have all the necessary documentation and details can be a laborious and time consuming task. Specialising in Construction and having experience on site we have been providing information to our clients for a number of years.

Based on the frequency we were asked to provide the details we decided to provide them as a product to help everyone who may need it.

Our Construction Site Safety Documents provide you with everything you need in one place allowing you to comply with the latest legislation.

The Safety Software includes

• 65 completed risk assessments
• 41 COSHH Assessments
• Construction Phase Health and Safety Plan (CDM 2015), which can be easily amended and edited for specific projects
• 70 Toolbox Talks
• Site inspection Check Sheets – Scaffold, Dumper, Excavator etc
• Permits to Work – Confined Space, Excavation, Hot Work, Asbestos, etc
• Site Setup Check Sheet
• Site Induction
• Site Rules
• Registers

STOP AND THINK

Our site management tools where designed to set up our own site many years ago. We put the files onto a laptop for our site managers. It saved us a fortune over the years both in time and money. The purchase of this site management toolkit is a great investment. Click on the link to buy.

Construction site safety documents and tools

 

SSIP Accreditation and CHAS

Have you recently been asked for an SSIP accreditation?

SSIP Accreditation and CHAS – SSIP (Safety Schemes in Procurement) is an umbrella group which sits above a number of accreditations you can get which assess your companies Health & Safety. There are a number of assessments you can go for and we have highlighted the most popular ones below:

• Acclaim
• Altius VA
• APS Corporate Membership
• ARB Approved Contractor
• Avetta (Formerly PICS Auditing)
• Builders Profile
• ConstructionLine
• BESA H&S Assessment
• BCSA
• CHAS
• CQMS Safety-Scheme
• DW H&S
• Eurosafe CDM Competent
• Exor H&S Qualified
• FASET
• Greenlight
• HSAS
• Laing O’Rourke
• MSL Safepartner
• NAS
• NASSH
• NHBC
• PQS
• Safemark Principal Safety (PASS)
• Safe-T-Cert
• Safe Contractor
• SMAS
• Worksafe
• OHSAS 18001 (schemes are listed on the site)

CHAS

The majority of our clients go for CHAS accreditation as this seems to be the popular one within the industry. CHAS have recently gone online with their submissions so customers can upload their documentation and then pay for the assessments once they are ready to submit.

This makes it easier for customers to see progress and communicate with their assessor.

If you are looking to get CHAS accreditation but are having trouble with the necessary documentation we can help with the preparation of these, we also provide a safety advisor service for companies with less than 5 employees so we can stay with you and help to implement the new documentation.

Impartial advise

Feel free to call us 0800 031 5404, and we can advise you on the best selection for your needs. We have completed thousands of applications and understand the market inside out. We don’t mind which company you select; the assessment process is the same, thanks to SSIP.

Who is Seguro

Seguro Health and Safety Management employs qualified health and safety consultants who complete the application to obtain accreditation from all the assessment companies. Seguro removes the pain of completing all the documentation and ensuring you comply. Feel free to contact us.

Learn more about CHAS

We have a series of articles where you can learn more about CHAS. The list of articles is below:

• What is CHAS
• CHAS accreditations
• CHAS registration
• Guide to CHAS
• CHAS renewal
• CHAS accreditation cost
• CHAS assessment criteria
• CHAS deem to satisfy
• CHAS Training Guidance
• Competent person and CHAS
• CHAS support

If you have any questions on what is CHAS accreditation please get in touch.

Working at heights course

Working in the construction industry can make it difficult to avoid working at heights on a daily basis our working at heights course addresses this issue. Although it may not be possible to avoid the risk you can ensure that you manage it by being aware of how to work safely.

Working at height safely is the responsibly of your employer as well as yourself. You should always be aware of the risks and ensure these are managed correctly. Every new job you are asked to work on will have been fully risk assessed and you should see a copy of this before you start. These risks have been measured on the sequence of events you are working too, if these change you need to be aware of what to look out for to ensure your safety.

1. Where possible try to use extendable tools or mechanical assistance to avoid you working at height.
2. Try to identify a safe place to work that is already in place, e.g  a concrete flat roof or guarded mezzanine floor.
3. Never work on a surface that is vulnerable such as glass roof. If this is not possible explore the use of machinery such as  an elevated work platform or a tower scaffold.
4. Try and minimise the distance of a possible fall, there are numerous ways to do this safely
5. For jobs requiring a small distance form the ground, Stepladders and Platform Ladders are a suitable option. These can only be used where the risk has been deemed as low.

Working at heights training course

If you are still unsure and would like to look at refreshing your knowledge we offer an e-learning course for you to sit whenever is convenient for you.