Assurance

Personality can indicate how people will perform in a safety-critical role. 

Case study

Research for an interview with L’Oréal’s global health and safety director, MalcolAm Staves, reveals a paradox. The world’s largest cosmetics group has virtual shelves full of awards for its corporate social responsibility (CSR) work, it rides high in ethical business indices and was No 1 in Newsweek magazine’s global green companies ranking.

More than two-thirds of rules in most safety and health management systems are self-imposed, said John Green in a keynote speech to the EHS Congress at the Radisson Blu hotel in Berlin, Germany, on 8 November.As regulatory systems have become more goal-based and less prescriptive, organisations have made rods for their own backs."We need to look inwards if we want to reduce our dependency on rules, not outwards," he argued.

Ten years ago, while he was working in the construction sector, Karl Simons decided to concentrate his efforts for OSH improvement below the layers of minor incidents and near-misses in Heinrich’s safety triangle where most OSH practitioners work.

In accordance with parliamentary procedures for a public appointment, the Transport Select Committee will hold a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing with Collier later this year, after which a final decision on his nomination will be made. The new chair is expected to take up the post on 1 January 2019 and transport secretary Chris Grayling said he expects to appoint Collier as a non-executive member of the board for a brief period before he takes up the role.

In the 12 months to April 2017, the Office of Rail and Road reported 273 suicides and suspected suicides on the UK’s railways. For Network Rail’s mobile operations managers and other frontline workers who respond to such potentially traumatic events, post-incident support is essential to address the ripple effect, as Dr Richard Peters, the rail infrastructure operator’s chief medical officer, describes it.“[While] someone from our team is going to be a first responder, there are also going to be individuals who are involved indirectly.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve noticed over the last ten years it’s that you have those safety risks that are clear for everybody to see,” says Paul Wright. “If there are trip hazards on a walkway, you can see them and do something about them. But quite a lot of what we do brings up risks that are only noticeable for a few seconds or only come to light at some stages of the activity or the day.

“Some people will say ‘you can’t do zero harm, that’s just ridiculous’ but how come we have sites that can go for years and years without harm? We are saying that day by day you always have to aim for zero harm and we expect those gaps to get bigger and bigger so sites go for more and more years [with no accidents].”

As one of the UK’s biggest construction clients and the nation’s largest listed commercial property company, Landsec accords asbestos management primary importance.“If there is an asbestos issue on one of our sites, it would be bad news, so it’s in our interest to do the right thing,” says David Tucker, health, safety and security business partner.