Re: Hazard creation
I had to fill out the accident book when the old lighting panels in the corridor were switched to LED. The old fixtures were left on top of a trolley in the corridor, and I happened to pass by at the exact moment that someone came out of a side door, so I half-stepped to the right and sliced a good three inch long cut into my arm from the lethally sharp corner of the old fixture.
Two days later, the trolley was still there, still piled high with razor sharp fixtures, but now the corridor was even more narrowed down by a little line of newly purchased plastic figures linking arms with the words "Danger - men working overhead" emblazoned on their torsos.
Queue a complaint from the diversity champion that the figures displayed a gross and implicit gender bias.
Queue a complaint from the H&S rep who pointed out that if the overhead work was actually a danger then the risk assessment should have been filed, and a more appropriate mitigation strategy might be a partial closure of the building. Had this risk in fact been classified as a hazard rather than a danger?
Next week the trolley was gone and the working practice had been changed to "Take the old fixtures down to the skip straight away instead of leaving them in the corridor."
Now the next task... persuading them to sweep the corridor properly and check the operation of the automatic firedoors daily before clocking off - they seemed to care little if they dropped a screw during the fixture change and that screw got kicked along the corridor until it wedged under the firedoor stopping them from closing properly, as was revealed by the weekly test.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
