The problem: An annual rise of 9% of work place accidents and illnesses costing £14.1 billion (HSE statistic).
An answer: Prevention is better than Cure-Prevention Investment Needed.
My mum used to say, “You only get out of life what you put into it”. Her purpose was to build a work ethic into us children and coming from working class, she had placed our future prosperity firmly into our hands.
A common saying is that it is ‘pure madness to repeat the process and expect a different outcome!’
So, how are these sayings connected and what is the point I am building to? The point I am leading to is that construction managers in the field and those starting out as managers are generally too busy to lift their heads out of their daily work loads and for many, having attained their obligatory training certificates, are on a chaos collision destination.
When an incident occurs on site, there is, and quite rightly so, a hive of activity demanded by company procedures and legislation to come up with an instant cure! The cure may include apportioning blame and reviewing, realigning and implementing new practices and procedures, and yet, it is to be noted again that it is ‘pure madness to repeat the process and expect a different outcome!’ It may be that in the review process of this instance, the risk of this particular scenario has been lessened, but my point is that as an industry, we need to focus more on the prevention of all possible scenarios and not just on specific incident cures. We need to manage safely in construction and need to have a continuous enthused health and safety culture managed by site managers who are H&S professionally equipped site champions.
Everybody knows prevention is better than cure but the problem is that cure is in more demand than prevention and investment and I am suggesting that the bench mark on attending just obligatory training needs to be raised.
This is confirmed by current HSE H&S statistics. This year there has been a rise of 9% of work place accidents and illnesses costing £14.1 billion (HSE statistic).
At RivaSure our policy is to provide cost effective training and to that end we currently have available on line a Construction Management Health and Safety Mentoring GAP course. It brings a focus on a moral, financial and legal aspect to Construction Site H&S Management which will enthuse a H&S culture on site!
We advocate leaning by investment rather than by fire fighting or incident managing: Learning from others to avoid today making the same mistakes.
Please feel free to take a look at how to get the course and access the catalogue, either personally or to add our course as part of an in-house training programme.
