Annual Guide 2017 I SOURCE TESTING ASSOCIATION
Emergency Planning Mark Elliott, STA H&S Chairman, NWG
One of the most frequent questions that has been raised at the STA Health & Safety meetings in recent years has been regarding emergency planning and response in relation to emissions testing. This has often been relating to who has the responsibility to manage this and what the test house needs to do.
Firstly, as part of the Work at Height Regulations, one of the primary tasks is to ensure that all work at height is properly planned and organized, making sure all risks associated with the job are fully assessed. A lot of this will focus on minimizing the exposure to work at height along with making sure that the correct equipment is used and that this is correctly inspected. However, one additional aspect that must be considered is emergency evacuation and rescue procedures for people working at height.
The HSE Work at Height Brief Guide stipulates, as a requirement in law, that;
“You must plan for emergencies and rescue, e.g. agree a set procedure for evacuation. Think about foreseeable situations and make sure employees know the emergency procedures. Don’t just rely entirely on the emergency services for rescue in your plan.”
From this it is clear that this plan should be a joint effort between the site and also the teams or personnel working at height. It is also to be noted that procedures will vary between sites depending on a variety of parameters, such as height of work, means of access, duration of task, nature of the site for example. Each site should have an Emergency Plan which is developed based on actual risks on their site.
Companies cannot simply rely on the Emergency Services without having any other plan. It may be that the Emergency Services could cope with a rescue from height from a site in some cases; however this should be discussed with them to ensure that this is the fact. Fire & Rescue have local liaison offi cers who can be contacted to discuss these issues with, and they will be able to advise on what they can do. For example not every area has High Line Rescue Teams and Ambulance Service Heart Teams, but these may be located some distance away. This type of information could be key in deciding what action needs to go into a site plan.
We canvassed opinion from a few of our member companies to look at systems they have in place. A few of the companies contacted have their own dedicated onsite rescue teams.
As an example we spoke to Andy Eastman, Shift Manager at Hanson UK who have proactively developed their system to provide an immediate response to any emergencies in confi ned spaces or from people who are working from height. Contractors had covered this in the past on their behalf during shut down situations; however following a proposal from Andy, who is a serving member of Fire & Rescue, they developed their own capability. Training their own staff reduced cost and also provided all year round trained staff, covering their legal requirements under Health & Safety.
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