The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 cover a wide range of basic health, safety and welfare issues and apply to most workplaces (except those involving construction work on construction sites, those in or on a ship, or those below ground at a mine).
Welfare facilities include toilets, wash basins, showers and changing facilities, and clean areas in which to rest, drink and eat. Check that all these areas are clean, and that they are regularly inspected for hygiene purposes. Ensure that all facilities are well lit and suitably ventilated.
- Verify that you have enough toilets and sinks for workers – there should be enough that no-one has to queue for long periods. If there are not separate facilities for men and women, ensure that rooms have lockable doors for privacy.
- Toilets should be well stocked with toilet paper, and there must be a means of disposing of female sanitary products.
- If your workers undertake dirty work, it may be appropriate to provide showers.
- Washbasins need to be large enough to fit hands in, and forearms if dirty work such as construction activities are undertaken. Make sure that both hot and cold water are provided, as well as soap and paper towels or a hand dryer.
- You need to provide drinking water for workers. This can be via drinking taps, water fountains or failing that, a bottled water supply. Ensure that non-drinking water taps are adequately labelled.
- Provide storage areas for wet or contaminated clothes. Use airers, for example, to dry out wet clothes during the course of the day.
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- When developing and writing down safety procedures, ensure that they are clear and applicable to the task. Use the findings of your risk assessments as the basis for determining what controls are needed, how they should be implemented and when. Ensure that the correct planning and coordination of tasks takes place before any work starts.
- Check before work starts that all workers understand the safety procedures and what is required of them. Simple misunderstandings can have major repercussions when heavy or dangerous machinery is in use, for example.
- Regularly review your safe systems of work to check that they are still current and applicable. Also check all procedures after an accident or near miss, to see if changes need to be made to your processes.
- Make sure that all work is supervised by a competent person who has knowledge of the task and a clear understanding of the safety procedures to be followed.
- Give the right level of training to workers in relation to their roles and the tasks they need to perform. Check that contractors know about the safety procedures, too, and that they understand them.
Always ensure employees and contractors fully understand the companies policies and procedures.
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Tips to Make Sure that Stacking Activities Are Carried Out Safely
- Do a risk assessment to assess the hazards involved in the stacking and unstacking of loads. Consider how workers could be hurt if loads were to fall on them.
- Look at industry guidance on the correct method of stacking for your type of loads, and devise a suitable stacking system for your premises.
- Train employees on how to safely stack loads, including the means of lifting the items into place and the gradients to be used. Remember that unstable items should slope backwards at the top to stop them slipping forwards.
- Make sure that the racking and/or pallets used are suitable for the type and weight of the items they hold.
- If there is a risk of items falling, introduce zoned areas with restricted access to prevent people being in the vicinity of the stacked items. An exclusion zone can be sectioned off by barriers, or if this is not possible by painting a zoned area onto the ground.
- Inform workers about the maximum heights that stacks can reach, and undertake regular checks to ensure that these measurements have not been exceeded.
If proper stacking procedures are not designed and implemented then serious accidents can occur if loads fall. Make sure this does not happen on your premises.
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- Do a risk assessment in advance to determine the hazards involved in the work activity. This should involve tasks relating to excavations through to working on or near the cables. Think about how electric cables could be disturbed, perhaps by the use of sharp tools, or by being crushed by machinery.
- Obtain the necessary drawings from the utility company so that you know exactly where the cables are – this should include both buried cables and those overhead. Ensure all parties involved in the work have a copy of the drawings.
- Provide training for workers on scanning and also on what different underground cables look like, from electricity through to gas and even telephone lines. Inform them that they must report any damage to cables that occurs during their work.
- Develop a safe system of work for all workers to follow. Whenever possible arrange for the cabling to be made dead by contacting the supplier.
- Make sure that the work is undertaken by trained workers and that it is always supervised by a competent person. Always ensure that workers dig alongside the cable rather than above it, and that they use insulated tools when digging.
Make sure that you have the necessary procedures in place to prevent an accident like this happening to one of your workers.
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