Working Safely?

[dylanwinter]

Work for freelancers

In the past I have got a fair amount of work because the official organisations cannot afford to cover their staff cameramen

lots of my material ends up on the BBC

I do things - such as flying with sheep farmers in their helicopters - that staffers or even sub contracted freelancers would not be allowed to do

Sometimes they cannot even contract you to do jobs .... but they are happy to buy the footage from you afterwards

Health and safety gone mad

but it gets me work and it is no more dangerous than rowing out to a mooring, riding a bike or a horse without wearing a helmet

so for me, as a freelance, the more rules they bring in the better

Dylan

 

[WoodyP]

What each of you do for your own safety is your own affair. I too take a risk based approach..........Thinks, that looks a bit risky I better take care!

that said however although I am in a relatively risk free environment I have responsibility for others. You just cannot take the risk with some one else's health and safety. I would never want to have to tell someone that their other half is not coming home again ever because of an avoidable incident. A fall of 1.4m on to the head could have been fatal or crippling.

It ain't worth it.

 

[Bobobolinsky]

Lots of things said about H&S, but

They spend huge amounts of money (Austerity?)
They are the only government department that does not publish accounts (even MI6 publish accounts real or not)

 

[Kerenza]

BBC Producer guidelines forbid the use of material obtained contrary to recognised methods or safety standards .
In practice you can't ask anyone to work in a situation which they are not qualified by experience to do so.
That's why Clarkson can drive fast and talk to camera, while a costume drama actor has to sit in a car on the back of a trailer and pretend.

Most cameramen can't work under water for obvious training reasons.

Any production manager should be looking very carefully at the provenance of material included in their programme. Unfortunately like so many areas of the media financial pressures are causing standards to slip.

What do you do when your just graduated daughter is asked to go out alone and film covertly in some seedy part of town?

Just today I have been asked to fill out a new h&s questionnaire to work on a site I have been working on regularly for 34 years. They have appointed a new responsible person. I fear I don't tick enough of the boxes.

 

[prv]

Lots of things said about H&S, but

They spend huge amounts of money (Austerity?)

Do they spend much of their own?

Pete

 

[trapezeartist]

I was fined £1000 (well, my client was) for using a rough terrain forklift as a shooting platform. It was at 2nd floor level and I had a harness on (but no cage).
Unfortunately it was in the middle of Hull and the HSE office overlooked the scene

You should have been shooting AT the HSE office. They wouldn't even be able to duck because their fall-arrest system would hold them (the one that stops them falling off their chair).

The world just keeps on getting weirder.

 

[Tomahawk]

Inconsistent sandards...

It is worth remembering that there is one organisation that owns huge amounts of property where there are acidents every day, people are injured and killed yet they do not do risk assessment or do anything to improve safety and they do not seem to worry about health and safety..


No this is not a joke... The land owner is the local Highway Authority... They work on a basis that there is no need to do anything until eight people have been killed in a period of six years...

Eight people killed in six years ....

Sounds incredible.. But I have an email from the area safety manager saying that they do not do risk assessment. It is too much work they said, the situation is always changing...

Why is that they alone can do nothing whilst everyone else has to jump after even a minor accident, such as the boat yard??

 

[prv]

Why is that they alone can do nothing whilst everyone else has to jump after even a minor accident, such as the boat yard??

Presumably because they don't employ anybody to drive on the roads.

It's the Health and Safety At Work Act.

Pete

 

[dylanwinter]

BBC and stock footage

BBC Producer guidelines forbid the use of material obtained contrary to recognised methods or safety standards .
In practice you can't ask anyone to work in a situation which they are not qualified by experience to do so.
That's why Clarkson can drive fast and talk to camera, while a costume drama actor has to sit in a car on the back of a trailer and pretend.

Most cameramen can't work under water for obvious training reasons.

Any production manager should be looking very carefully at the provenance of material included in their programme. Unfortunately like so many areas of the media financial pressures are causing standards to slip.

What do you do when your just graduated daughter is asked to go out alone and film covertly in some seedy part of town?

Just today I have been asked to fill out a new h&s questionnaire to work on a site I have been working on regularly for 34 years. They have appointed a new responsible person. I fear I don't tick enough of the boxes.

All broadcasting organisations buy in material

they cannot possibly know under what circumstances it was filmed

A chunk of my income comes from selling my bird films -

the slug would never pass any safety tests, I have no qualifications, seldom wear a life jacket, heat stuff on location in tin cans

I remember the producer guidelines while I was at the BBC
they arrived each year in a big fat book. They would stay on the shelf above my desk for a year until the new version arrived

no-one ever looked at them - however, I no longer work there. I just work for them occasinally as a contractor or I sell them my digits.

as for the example of your grand daughter - if she is a responsible enough person to send out with a camera then she should be sensible enough to assess the risks for herself.

No job is without risk - journalism is probably riskier than most jobs

 

[onesea]

The risks and their consequences to individuals are exactly the same irrespective of employment or not. The intent is to prevent injury or loss to a person when engaged in an activity. Is this not a worthy thing to do when engaged in a private activity?

Stop building boats then no more accidents of this type, allot less accidents afloat.

10 years ago I joked that before long we would have signs saying NOW Wash your hands in every bathroom and now the signs are common place

HSE are going to nanny us all out of existance.

+1 Because people will stop recognising dangerous situations as they will be so unfamiliar with them...

What each of you do for your own safety is your own affair. I too take a risk based approach..........Thinks, that looks a bit risky I better take care!

that said however although I am in a relatively risk free environment I have responsibility for others. You just cannot take the risk with some one else's health and safety. I would never want to have to tell someone that their other half is not coming home again ever because of an avoidable incident. A fall of 1.4m on to the head could have been fatal or crippling.

It ain't worth it.

By this guide as a responsible person you would not take other people sailing, any accident sailing is avoidable do not go!

Ok I am playing devils advocate but....

 

[Tomahawk]

Presumably because they don't employ anybody to drive on the roads.

It's the Health and Safety At Work Act.

Pete

Pete.

I used to think the same... Except there are a couple of things that should be considered..

First the do employ a lot of people who work on the road itself.. The actual Highway Engineers who do the maintanance (sick joke there) and other planning.. For them the entire highway network is their place of work, the factory floor so to speak, when these folks are driving to look at a job, they are using the workspace in exactly the same way as someone is using the workspace to walk from the sales office to the factory floor..

They should be protected by a risk assessment to ensure the workspace is safe to use..

Then there are other employees of the County Council who use the roads to go to normal work related meetings; supply teachers, planning officers, delivery vans. They should also be protected by a risk assessment for the trip in exactly the same way as a secretary should be able to cross a factory floor to take a message to her boss ....in safety.

Then there is Section 3 which says an employer has a duty of care to ensure that third parties are not put at risk of injury on account of their activity. Although it appears to have been introduced to protect you from bricks falling of a scaffold onto your head, it has been used to prosecute the; Met for the Stockwell shooting, Maldon District Council after the drowning in the old Prom Lake, (which has now been closed as an outdoor bathing lake), as well Network Rail for the death of two teenage girls on the level crossing in Essex. It was also invoked during the recent Leginella outbreak in Edinburgh, whe H&S inspectors ordered a factory owners to improve air condition units, even in the absence of proof that any one was responsible for the outbreak.



So here is the question... Why can the Highway authority do nothing about a known accident blackspot where people are regularly killed or injured, whilst everyone else has to immediately introduce improved safety measures..??

Now for the sickening bit... You will probably know someone who was killed or injured in an accident that could not have occluded if a proper risk assessment had been done..

 

[Tommyrot]

H&S?

Wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire, and Judith Hackitt went to the same school as me!

I'm off into the shed again now to use my big pillar drill with the exposed drive belt.

 

[Lakesailor]

You should have been shooting AT the HSE office. They wouldn't even be able to duck because their fall-arrest system would hold them (the one that stops them falling off their chair).

The world just keeps on getting weirder.

What is even better is that when the development was finished and they wanted shots of it from all angles, I went to the HSE office and they let me lean out of their window to get a good shot!

It was only then that I realised that from that window you could see a tower block that I used to use as a vantage point for a different series of progress shots a couple of years earlier. I used to walk around the track that supported the window cleaning cradle and shoot down on the shopping centre being built below.
I suppose they assumed I had a safety harness.

 

[johnphilip]

Address the risk sensibly.

I used to be responsible for H&S for a building firm with tens of employees on sites. I joined with many in the outcry at the paper trail that was required to keep certain officials happy but I fully supported the idea that people had the right to expect to go home at knocking off time in one piece.
For years a fall from height had been regarded as a fall from over two Metres and handrails and so on not necessary until that height.
Stand on a scaffold board 1.9 above ground and tell me this was right.
This was updated and removed any specific height figure and brought about quite a change for those who were visible to the authorities, sometimes it became very difficult to comply.
However with a second look at practices we had used for years there is no doubt a better arrangement could often be applied at reasonable cost.
Take the offence by the boatyard that the OP highlighted, a small tower such as http://www.scaffold-tower.co.uk/Miniscaff_Folding_Towers/
would have saved the day and for the use a boatyard would get from it the cost is negligable, in fact boatowners should consider getting their own, perhaps shared with one or two others.
The thing that used to make me annoyed was trying to keep in line with our legal duties (of course we sometimes transgressed, normally when we had not anticipated a set of circumstances,) but watching cowboys, against whom we had to compete in the market taking no precautions at all.

 

[Bobobolinsky]

Pete.

I used to think the same... Except there are a couple of things that should be considered..

First the do employ a lot of people who work on the road itself.. The actual Highway Engineers who do the maintanance (sick joke there) and other planning.. For them the entire highway network is their place of work, the factory floor so to speak, when these folks are driving to look at a job, they are using the workspace in exactly the same way as someone is using the workspace to walk from the sales office to the factory floor..

They should be protected by a risk assessment to ensure the workspace is safe to use..

Then there are other employees of the County Council who use the roads to go to normal work related meetings; supply teachers, planning officers, delivery vans. They should also be protected by a risk assessment for the trip in exactly the same way as a secretary should be able to cross a factory floor to take a message to her boss ....in safety.

Then there is Section 3 which says an employer has a duty of care to ensure that third parties are not put at risk of injury on account of their activity. Although it appears to have been introduced to protect you from bricks falling of a scaffold onto your head, it has been used to prosecute the; Met for the Stockwell shooting, Maldon District Council after the drowning in the old Prom Lake, (which has now been closed as an outdoor bathing lake), as well Network Rail for the death of two teenage girls on the level crossing in Essex. It was also invoked during the recent Leginella outbreak in Edinburgh, whe H&S inspectors ordered a factory owners to improve air condition units, even in the absence of proof that any one was responsible for the outbreak.



So here is the question... Why can the Highway authority do nothing about a known accident blackspot where people are regularly killed or injured, whilst everyone else has to immediately introduce improved safety measures..??

Now for the sickening bit... You will probably know someone who was killed or injured in an accident that could not have occluded if a proper risk assessment had been done..

It's all trumped by

"And anyone else who may be affected" Don't have to be an employee at all

 

[wotayottie]

Unfortunately like so many areas of the media financial pressures are causing standards to slip.

Might be true elsewhere but the BBC is awash with money.

By this guide as a responsible person you would not take other people sailing, any accident sailing is avoidable do not go!

Given the way that the UK legal system works, only a fool takes someone else sailing. Accidental gybe, someone made paraplegic by a hit on the head from the boom and you could find yourself with a bill for £5 million cash and 100k per annum for as long as he lives as well. Does your insurance cover that? Do you warn passengers about that risk? Do you make them wear helmets? Do you ever sail even a bit by the lee?

When I was working I always took the view that I did not have the right to risk anyone else's life or limb and we used safety procedures and equipment accordingly. With very few exceptions, it was not a problem and monthly meetings / walk rounds with the factory inspector helped make sense of things. He was an assistance not a source of problems. The biggest problems came from laziness, sloppiness by shop floor workers - for example knowingly using a 2 tonne hoist for a 5 tonne lift when the 5 tonne hoist was only a short walk away. Or worse still, bypassing / sabotaging safety guards because it made life easier and earnings greater. For their part the unions fought tooth and nail to avoid ear protection being made compulsory because that would make it more difficult for retiring employees to claim hearing damage and get their 2k regarded as a retirement right. Yes, really!

But the irony of all this is that when working on the boat myself with an angle grinder I do not wear goggles . I dont wear a helmet when there are lifts going on. Or safety boots or gloves. Daft isnt it?

 

[GrahamM376]

Had a strange situation in Moody Swanwick yard a few years ago. The boat we had purchased was well propped on the hard and I needed to fit the radar dome.

Passing worker spotted me about to use bosuns chair and stopped me - no mast climbing in the yard. OK, can I borrow a ladder if I tie it on? No, cherry picker only but we have to do it. Do it when you're in the water.

Launched into their marina, borrowed ladder and did the job. It seems that getting chucked off the ladder due to the boat rolling with wash from passing boats wasn't a "risk" but falling onto my deck in the yard from a stable platform was!

 

[Lakesailor]

I learned (too late) about noise. The consultant hearing specialist assessed me as having very sensitive hearing. This she explained accounts for the difficulty I have with listening to, say a telephone conversation with a radio playing nearby. I hear everything.
She warned it was also a thing which would make me susceptible to hearing loss when exposed to loud noises.
She claimed she wore ear defenders to mow the lawn.

It was probably already too late, but it still took a while for me to adopt the use of ear defenders when grinding or using chainsaws etc.

I find now that I have constant humming in my ears, which only really bothers me at night, but could have been avoided.

As for safety glasses. I only have the one pair of eyes and have always protected them as I am quite fond of them.

 

[Tugw]

H&S?

Wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire, and Judith Hackitt went to the same school as me!

I'm off into the shed again now to use my big pillar drill with the exposed drive belt.

love it

 

[dleroc]

H&S?

Wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire, and Judith Hackitt went to the same school as me!

I'm off into the shed again now to use my big pillar drill with the exposed drive belt.

I hope you have the chuck guard in place!