FEATURE
Your adverse weather policy should clearly communicate how your organisation will manage/ take action in extreme weather situations. Key aspects of any effective plan include:
• Use of a recognised health and safety management system such as OHSAS1800115 to ensure the plan is fit for purpose.
• Clearly defined and communicated responsibilities - both on the ground and with a senior ‘champion’ to ensure high level management buy-in.
• A process for documenting the proactive actions, incidents and investigations undertaken with records maintained and kept for a minimum of three years.
• Ensuring the plan is based on detailed surveys to identify hazard areas and that action is undertaken according to real time accurate weather data and agreed action triggers for service.
• Adequate resourcing with either professional contractors or a dedicated trained in-house team, sufficient and well-maintained PPE.
• Clearly defined KPIs to measure performance against and a process to review the plan and any KPIs on a regular basis (at least bi-annually).
Don’t leave it to the last minute A carefully considered winter maintenance plan will be an essential part of your Health & Safety toolkit, ensuring the safety and productivity of everyone on site. Ultimately, the process of developing such a plan should start months ahead of winter. If your organisation is one of the quarter of UK businesses without a plan (and presumably having to responding in an ad hoc manner to current conditions), then now is the time to take stock of the scope of the challenge and evaluate your organisations response. The lessons learned this winter will be invaluable for developing an adequate plan for the future. This is equally true for businesses that have prepared but perhaps not been following best practice to regularly review their planning: Once the pressure is off, take time to review and seek opportunities to improve.
Can you really afford not to? One of the most fundamental reasons that the UK seems to be lagging behind other countries in managing extreme weather is that preparedness costs money. However, the short-term costs of effective planning pales into insignificance compared to the financial and reputational risks to an organisation of being found negligent and failing to meet its Duty of Care.
www.outco.co.uk www.tomorrowsfm.com TOMORROW’S FM | 35
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