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COVID 19

COVID 19 is a new disease which has caused a world wide pandemic with little warning. It has affected us all at home and at work and in many different ways. It is a key new risk to be captured by your organisation’s safety management systems.

At the moment, guidance is quite sparse, especially for some sectors, and the nature of the guidance is changing almost daily. It is hard to ensure that your systems meet best practice and are kept up to date. At the same time, businesses need to survive, and finding pragmatic ways of keeping people safe at work is very necessary.

Best solution if feasible is home working. This immediately raises a couple of points. If premises are now vacant or low occupancy, the legionella risks will rise and must be addressed. Also, your responsibilities for your workers do not go away because they are working from home. You have to assess the risks to them, and try to mitigate such risks as are under your control, just as you always did.

If you are working as a contractor, you are likely to have been asked for your COVID 19 risk assessment and method statement already. The more helpful clients have also provided guidance on producing these, or referred you to the government guidance on line.

If you have not yet done so, the time is now to write your COVID risk assessment and determine what measures are required as people go back to work. The form of the risk assessment doesn’t matter, but it should capture some main points:

How will we keep people who may be infectious out of our workplace?
How will we protect the particularly vulnerable?
How will we achieve social distancing for staff and public?
What washing hands provision have we?
What Personal Protective Equipment do we need to provide?
How will we dispose of potentially infected waste?
What do we do when social distancing cannot be achieved?
What rules or method statements will we provide for staff?
What adjustments can be made to our cleaning regimes for potentially contaminated surfaces?
What welfare provision changes may be needed?

If you’ve been thinking of employing a consultant to assist with your health and safety duties, we’ve provided constant support and updating ever since March on this matter for our Safety Adviser Service clients. We’ve helped with or actually written risk assessments and method statements, dealt with Client queries, and advised on particular circumstances. It’s good to have trustworthy support at a difficult time.

Safety Adviser Service

We now offer a new payment scheme allowing clients to pay monthly with our new Safety Adviser Service. Spread your payments throughout the year! To find out more Contact Us

Health and Safety Audit

An audit is the opportunity to find whether your company is meeting requirements and also what might need to be done.

Safety Management Systems & Policies

Clients also often ask for assistance in developing and documenting suitable safety management systems.

Risk Assessment

The good thing about risk assessment is due to the freedom it offers you to choose how you manage risk.

Fire Risk Assessment

Fire risk assessment is very important to our clients who own or manage buildings.

Training

Generally, we provide training for our clients, rather than public courses.

Consultancy & “Competent Person”

For an organisation for whom we do a single day’s work or more in the year, that organisation can as a result quote us as their health and safety consultant.

Site Checks

We commonly carry out site checks for sectors including civil construction, utilities and renewables.

Accreditation Support

If your company needs accreditation by CHAS, SMAS, Safe Contractor or any of the other SSIP schemes, we can help. We will complete the questionnaire with you, put your systems in place and ensure you are accepted as a result.

Choosing a Health and Safety Consultant

Choosing a health and safety consultant to support your business is a difficult decision. First of all, how do you, as an outsider, make sense of different qualifications and accreditations? How do these take account of experience in your sector?

Find out more here

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Excellence in Health and Safety, Est. 1998

SafetyWise Ltd has been operating since 1998, and is based in Somerset.

We have developed considerable experience of our client sectors, and have also put together highly successful safety management systems for many organisations. Working across the UK, both on site with clients and their partners, and from our office. We have a special interest in small businesses in our local area.

What are we about?

We believe that as every organisation is unique, so the safety management systems which will work best for that organisation must also be unique. We develop and implement systems in close conjunction with clients, and we do not use any standard material, but create fully appropriate documentation at length for the client. This also means that we can build on in house strengths, so as to integrate the management of safety with other successful systems.

We don’t like paper

Systems are about what happens. Files of paperwork are of very limited value. Every word documented has a valid reason, hence our systems are only as detailed and complex as is actually necessary. We also communicate electronically. Indeed, we will print out only on request.

We are not risk averse

Risk is part of running any business, and there is nothing wrong with risk. Our concern is to ensure that the risk is known and understood, correctly evaluated, and that any associated legal requirements are met. At that point – your decision, and we will not be urging risk averse approaches, but sensible management strategies.