A Report into Health and Safety at the Evaporator D Project
Introduction
This report looks at Health and Safety (H&S) and how it is adhered to in the modern business, the report looks at the background of the Sellafield site along with the main view of the Evaporator D project where Costain is the main contractor. This report first looks at the background of Health and Safety and why it has become a prominent factor within the construction and process industries, the report will then look at Costain and how it views and deals with Health and Safety; the report will examine Costains H&S policies and compare them to the real world applications. The report will examine the safety innovations that have been created on the Evaporator D project and analyses whether these have been or could be applied to other Costain projects. The penultimate part of the report will put questions to Costain workers on the Evaporator D project and detail how they view the H&S on the site and document whether they believe changes or improvements can be made. The report will end with a conclusion.
Health and Safety in the Workplace
Health and Safety in business covers a broad spectrum of areas, it covers not only hazardous tasks but simple office operations. H&S ensures that all tasks performed in the workplace are done safely from making a cup of tea to lifting a 10 tonne roof section, although these tasks have different levels of risk they both must be treated the same and performed with a high level of safety so that any persons involved in the process are kept safe and unharmed. H&S in the workplace has now been integrated into industry for 39 years since the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, this Act pioneered the way for employees and employers to create a safe productive workplace, H&S today is governed by pieces of legislation like the Health and Safety at Work etc Act and enforced by the HSE and local authorities.
The HSE as an organisation do not only enforce the H&S legislation they also provide recommendations to employers for safe practice and provide information and resources to help employers supply a high-quality place of work. In recent years the public perception of H&S has seemingly dropped this has been put down to H&S being misused in certain situations for example children having to wear goggle to play conkers, Christmas decorations being a hazard in the workplace and hanging baskets being removed in case people bang there head, these examples are in fact H&S myth there is no legislation which bans any of these and the HSE openly post these myths on their website. The examples are actually of companies or persons using H&S as an excuse and not its intended purpose, along with the misuse in recent years the public view of H&S has dropped through a series of situations where the emergency services have been forced not to assist someone in need due to H&S fears. A large factor that is also changing H&S is the ‘compensation culture’ that has reared its ugly head in the UK this culture has caused employers to become ever more stringent with H&S and how they operate on a whole. Due to this H&S nonsense the coalition government intends to make H&S clearer and more transparent this has been shown in the recent ‘common sense common safety report’ that was commissioned by David Cameron, the report produced by Lord Young and the HSE details recommendations for improving how H&S is applied and how this ‘compensation culture’ that has arisen in recent years can be tackled. Although the general public opinion of H&S outside of the workplace is low within industries such as construction and manufacturing the opinion of H&S is increasingly good from both the employers and employees views, this can be seen in a Health and Safety survey conducted by the HSE it was found that the majority of employers 73% say that health and safety benefits there company as a whole and 63% say it saves money in the long term and 78% also strongly disagree