Posted By Bob Burton Please help, (this is my first post to this forum). I am in the final stages of a NEBOSH general certificate (exam pending) and have been asked for advice by a local house removals company on the subject of manual handling. With considerable experience in conducting workplace risk assessments including manual handling), establishing SS'sOW,and training in a warehousing and distribution environment (where we have repetitive tasks and adequate supervision) I find that home removals manual handling a bit of a hornets nest. My objectives are to guide the owners through their legal duties, and give all employees training in basic manual handling including individual and team lifting techniques, and conducting "on the spot assessments". (I do hold a national trainers qualification) Could I ask for your opinions on how a small removals company would expect to assess and manage manual handling operations in such a dynamic environment such as variations of loads, environment, weather conditions, lack of complicated mechanical aids (with the exception of simple trolleys) and in a lot of cases restricted space/staircases. They do send an assessor in to plan the move, but only locally as the final destination could be anywhere in Europe. How would European legislation affect operations? How could managers conduct accident investigations in a different country? (risks tend to be manual handling related and in some cases employees falling of the back of the lorry) I have been asked by this company to go out on a pickup locally and conduct my own risk assessments. However, in my experience conducting manual handling risk assessments, all the rules would go out the window such as pulling/pushing at 250 Newton’s etc (How can you develop as safe system of work for carrying a piano up and down 4 flights of stairs???) I look forward to reading your responses and will probably post more specific questions over the next few weeks Thank you

Posted By Ian Dakin Hi Bob This is a tough task, as you have outlined. Remember that the detail of the assessment must reflect the level of complexity and risk in the operation. I would think you may need to do several assessments. A good way to do this would be to do a list of the different manual handling operations and prioritise them. This will also help you if an accident happens in the mean time as you could show any enforcement officer you had started the process. My experience of the MAC tool is that it is easy to use, but not a great deal of use. I am starting to use it though as the HSE are expecting companies to use it. I also use the TILE/LITE method to back up the MAC tool. However, the down side of this is that TILE/LITE is qualitative rather than quantitative. As you will presumably be giving advise as the appointed person, you need to do more than hope nothing goes wrong. Your advise will need to be correct. Therefore you may wish to consider further training. A few yeas ago I did IOSH Kinetic Handling: Train the Trainers. A superb course ran for IOSH by a company called Human Applications. You would then be considered trained to assess and train. Regards Ian