drain
WRITTEN BY IAN CLARKE
ian@nodigmedia.co.uk
Please dear reader before you look at this and say ‘not another thing on training’ and turn the page to find something else to read, what follows might be of interest as it is not so much about the training itself as tohowthe industry is trying simplify recognition of the competence of workers and companies for clients and customers, so please read on.
Perhaps itmay be politic to look at what underpins the need for trained and competent personal onworksites as thismay just give the foundation on which the push for training has been based for many decades. It is of course obvious that if someone is using a product or piece or equipment to complete any sort of job that they need to knowhowto use it and more importantly howto use it safely, both for their own wellbeing and for thewellbeing of those around them,workmates and the passing public if they are nearby. It is not always that obvious that at times the simplest of jobs carries a deal of risk, but the statistics often prove otherwise. Safety is more often than not the foundation on and focus of most of the training courses in our industry. Just recently the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) released its annual statistics forworkplace fatalities which does not make the best of reads. In the 2019/2020 period some 111workerswere
killed.The only bright side of this is that this figure is actually 38 downon the previous year and is the lowest annual number ofworkplace deaths on record, but even one is too many. This year’s figureswere somewhat impacted by the advent of the COVID- 19 pandemic and led to difficulties in assessing the impact that the pandemic has had on the number ofworkplace fatalities.With reporting of annual fatality figures running fromApril toMarch, figures excluding the deaths in February andMarch, when coronavirus began to impact workplaces,were compared. Itwas found that over the first ten months of 2019/2020, fewer deathswere reported than in previous comparable years. Considering the full year, the number ofworkplace fatalities has been significantly lower, and COVID-19may have had some impact on reducingworkplace fatalities further due to site closures or reduced operations on sites. Unfortunately, the construction sector remains the area where most workplace fatalities
occurred.The figures also showed that this sector
4 drain | September 2020 |
www.draintraderltd.com
was the only to showa rise in fatalities over the period with 40 as compared with 31 the previous year. Looking at the figures as the rate per 100,000workers, the construction sector has a fatality rate four times higher than the average across all industries. Across all industries the fatalities listed by accident type include: • 29 deaths fromfalls fromheight, downfrom40 the previous year, but this still remains the largest cause ofworkplace fatalities;
• 20 deaths frombeing struck by amoving vehicle, a decrease of 10 fromthe previous year;
• 18 deaths resulted frombeing struck by amoving object, an increase of two fromthe previous year;
• 15 deaths due to being trapped by something collapsing or over- turning, increased from11 deaths the previous year;
• 11 deaths due to contact withmoving machinery, this has decreased from14 deaths the previous year;
• 18 deathswere attributed to other kinds of accident - this figurewas 34 the previous year.
• Perhaps not surprisingly when age and gender figureswere compared they showed that:
• 97% ofworkplace fatalitieswere maleworkers; • 27% ofworkplace fatalitieswere toworkers over 60 years old, despite them only accounting for 10% of theworkforce.
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