Posted By Alan Hoskins Not as bad as it was in the eighties...

Posted By el nino I have always approached from the side of safety for the sake of safety and then added the financial benefits to clinch the deal with the board when I wanted to spend money or put in new procedures etc. More recently, in the last couple of years, there has been talk of "loss" and "controls". The implication is strongly that we do safety for financial reasons and to help instill quality by the development of procedures etc. El Nino

Posted By Merv Newman I was HSE manager for two plants, totalling about 12 years. Never had a budget. "want some fire extinguishers ? OK, I'll tell what types, how many and where to put them. Send me a copy of your purchase order and, as it's safety, I'll countersign it" Safety is a Management responsibility. With guidance from the experts. Big career failure in my 9th year on the job - someone slipped on the ice and had to take a couple of weeks off.

Posted By Raymond Rapp Alan There are many issues some of which have already been mentioned. However, part of the problem lies with tangible benefits. Safety per se is difficult to measure and to cost, whereas accidents and incidents are all too easy cost, and when things do go wrong safety is raised to the top of the agenda. Also, the present cost is seen as worth more value than future costs/savings. Hence management often suffer from long-term myopia. Regards Ray

Posted By EE Unless you are working for a charitable company then I would say that at the end of the day every EHS professional is in it for the money. We fight our corner and believe that we are doing it for the good of others - but I have yet to meet a manager that would sacrifice a human beings life, or long term health for making the budget. Even the "them managers" we frequently see referred to in these pages are humans - perhaps with slightly different perspective to us - but their goals are the same. Money makes the world go around & pays our bills / mortgages / food / holidays / drinks / social life / pensions etc. etc. Therefore we must act in a professional manner in assisting the companies we work for, and the employees we work with (at all levels) to perform their duties to the best of their abilities in a safe manner - but not to the detriment of the business - unless the risks are too high. What is frustraing sometimes is the justificaiton that an task must be done safely - following a risk assessment, or not at all. I'd guess the majority of UK employees do not benefit from EHS professional advice - but still work in a safe manner.

Posted By Frank Hallett Hi Alan and all "Reasonably Practicable" really is all about money! However, it's not about doing it as cheap as possible like some think; it's about balancing the costs of the remedial and control measures against the potential costs of not controlling the hazard sufficiently well. If it were not about money, all of the definitions and Case Law that support the "reasonably practicable" approach would cease to exist and be irrevelant - even the HSWA recognises that it may not be "reasonably practicable" to attain a 100% safe work environment - see HSWA S40. Before the evangalistas jump all over me; I am NOT suggesting that we shouldn't strive for the ultimate, I'm simply responding to the underlying question that is being discussed in the earlier posts on this thread. Frank Hallett

Posted By steve dowse i once worked at corus(scaffolding) where in one place crances were kept going and were just feet away from us,i said they should be stopped in my opinion. if u slipped or fell just feet those crances would have ripped you off. you would have been killed for sure.why didnt they stop them? money.But to me my life is worth more than the profits corus are trying to make.Without a shadow of a doubt,money to companies outways safety.

Posted By EE Reasonably practicable - I've always taken a dual-approach to this. The traditional cost v risk or loss, as well as the physical practicality of a control system. e.g. (to expand on a prior thread) it would be cheap enough to provide all office workers with a pair of non-cut "kevlar" gloves (and an extremist may find that the cost of providing such gloves is less than the sum of the non-productive time spent going to clean the wound and put a plaster on - over a long enough period)- but if I was to insist on all office workers wearing gloves everytime they handle paper - would this be practicable. The loss of manual dexterity would make the taks impossible to achieve in a safe manner. Also on another thread: Steve Dowse scaffolding in Corus: You survived to type a response here, then I guess the safety standards / systems of work in place at the time were sufficent. If you had slipped or fell off the scaffolding - would this have possibly caused severe injuries / you being killed before the crane came along to "rip" you up? My guess is that the crane driver was competent and either adopted fixed stop-blocks on the tracks to prevent getting to close to the scaffolding - or the driver was informed to keep a set distance away from the scaffolding (10' or so). How many of us drive along the motorways at 50+mph within feet of men at work (like you). They are just inside a few plastic cones and I guess that the safe systmes of work / provision of compentent drivers on our motorways are far lower than the standards that were in place in Corus.