Posted By R M Diss Hi All, Some advice please! I have recently joined a law firm as H & S Manager, previously coming from a Facilities Management background, with a H & S bias. One of my first tasks is to carryout an Audit of the companies current H & S systems etc. Can anyone give me advice on how to carry one out etc? As I said previously, it is a law firm, so corporate, office issues etc. If someone has an examlpe audit or framework that they can send to me, I would be very grateful! Regards Rob

Posted By Hayley McBride Hi Clare, could you alos send me a copy too. Many thanks Hayley

Posted By Graham Lovell Hi Rob. As you have been sent an audit can I mention the following. I am sure that this is all being looked at, but some of the issues I found have been over looked at a few locations I have worked at. Whenever I have undertaken office audits which is fairly frequent I undertake it in two ways. 1. General Audit. 2 Specific Audit. If I find problems with the General Audit then I focus on the problem with the specific audit on the individual areas. Areas looked at should be. Fire and evacuation, DSE (both for office and external use), manual handling (including laptops), Electrical, COSHH, risk assessments for employees, (ie for meeting clients and going to court) contractors, window cleaning, walkways and especially storing paperwork on top of cupboards, kick steps, lift maintenance and escalators if there is one. Home working risk assessments. If driving is also undertaken that should also be looked at as well. Training should also be on the agenda. Consider late evening working when there are fewer staff in the office as well as its at these times that if things go wrong they can fall over. The above list is only general and I could add more. The main thing is to make an inventory. From the inventory list out what needs to be checked.. Consult any legislation if required so that extra items can be added to the audit, ie COSHH, DSE etc. Then go out and try it on your department first and see if your system works. If it needs tweaking it can be amended before you meet any Managers/Directors etc. Keep the inventory for external audit as well as your audit findings and any remedial work/procedures that have been implemented from the non-compliances if there were any. One thing I have done when there is a planed fire evacuation test, is to have staff stay in the building to observe what staff do. I have seen staff carry (hot) drinks with them on their way out, stop to pick up coats which are not on their exit route and visit the kitchen. This was all fed back to the staff on their office meeting days and what they should be doing. I hope this is of some use to you. Regards Graham

Posted By Shaun Brennan You could try looking at the 1800-1 H&S audit but couple it with a 9001 audit it wouldnt be far off the mark. include fire risk assessments DSE and PEEP( personal emergency evacuation plan, think about the stuff you did in FM and you wont really be that far away. Hope that helped!!! you could find templates for the Audits on the web somewhere Bugsy