News Article
ATLAS: Charting A Course For Safety To Help The Construction Industry Scale New Heights
Posted Tuesday 25 November, 2008 | Permalink
Britain’s construction industry is currently experiencing a period of unprecedented change; facing the threat of a national recession, the influx of foreign workers and the lure of multi-million pound projects in Dubai, Britain’s builders are heading into unchartered territory and reassessing their business plans to meet a constant stream of challenges.
However, despite the wave of changes, one issue remains as important as ever: the health and safety of workers on site. Even though UK construction has introduced a number of initiatives to improve safety, from orange hard hat systems for bilingual operatives to increasingly thorough daily tool box briefings, the problem posed by dangerous building sites refuses to go away; according to the Health & Safety Executive there have been 77 fatal injuries in the past year, a 27% increase on the previous year. And 23 of these deaths (30%) were due to falls from height.
This figure is clearly unacceptable. But how can we reduce it?
The Association of Technical Lightning and Access Specialists (ATLAS) is currently leading the fight against unsafe working practices at height. The Association has recently published a new series of best practice guidelines discussing a range of seminal issues including chimney inspection, safe access, safe lightning conductor installation and safe installation of fixings for access equipment. They make it clear why and at what point a Specialist Access contractor should be involved in a project, undeniably helping to reduce the number of accidents and deaths that occur whilst working at height. It is in effect the new gold standard for best practice in the industry.
Replacing the old code of best practice, the new guidelines take a full range of factors into account including current working-at-height regulations and British and European standards. The guidelines have been produced with input from the HSE, as well as acknowledged independent consultants. Consequently, they provide a fully comprehensive blueprint for all companies and operatives in the industry.
As a series of guidelines rather than a hard-and-fast code, the new recommendations are designed to advise rather than dictate, to assist rather than to enforce – and enable those working on the spot to use their own experience to create a solution for each unique situation.
Roger Coonie, Director of Church Conservation Ltd and a former president of ATLAS, explains the rationale behind the new guidelines:
“We have had many professional people on board in producing the guidelines and they represent a broad cross-section of our industry. They offer years of experience and their involvement ensures we are fully aware of the needs and wishes of our stakeholders. ATLAS wants to ensure that the staggering number of untimely deaths that occurred last year is not repeated. We want these guidelines to make a difference and improve health and safety standards whilst working at height. Quite simply, it is imperative that contractors take our guidelines seriously, as after all we are quite literally talking about saving lives here!
“At the end of the day you still need everyone on site to use their knowledge and expertise, as well as their ability to interpret a structure which changes as it ascends, to apply the guidelines in the context of their working environment, because every site is different.
“Some of those affected by the guidelines will be working on petrochemical installations and power stations; some will be working in Dubai and other foreign countries on brand-new sites; some companies, like mine, will be working on traditional churches. The requirements vary hugely depending on whether the site is brick or concrete, stone or steel, and it is difficult to apply an all-embracing standard given these variables, and we felt guidelines were more appropriate.”
ATLAS is currently working with the Construction Fixings Association (CFA) and with leading manufacturers of construction fixings to revise the annexes for The Anchors for Steeplejacking Guidance Notes. These annexes will introduce a spreadsheet programme which enables site managers to feed in details of the type of structure they are working on and the loads involved. The programme will then specify the type and number of fixings needed for that particular application.
In addition the Association is standardising the design of brackets and scaffolding frames used by the industry. These designs have been refined with advice from highly qualified structural engineers and will soon be available on both the CFA and ATLAS websites.
Roger is enthusiastic about the changes and believes attitudes towards safety are already changing:
“ATLAS, as always has a proactive attitude towards change and we believe by encouraging contractors to improve their training and risk assessment regimes that significant improvements in health and safety can be accomplished. We will continue to improve our method statements and guidance notes, and we hope others will endeavour to do the same.
“Perhaps other industries, such as the scaffolding industry, will feed off our innovation just as we have fed off them in the past and adapt their own guidelines in line with ours.”
