A well known Principle Contractor has just informed all contractors that it is now compulsory for personnel to wear Safety Glasses? They cannot provide their assessment that led them to this decision and are being pretty bullish about it.

Before biting my hand off

My train of thought is that How am I to comply with the PPE regs and correctly assess the risk as I do for all tasks; Do I just record"I was told to"?? I think not

I do not really mind complying to a mandate if there is substance to it but not when it has been ill thought out and an assessment has not been made it tends to boil my blood.

Forgot (before someone else comes along): It's Principal Contractor.

All personnel are required to wear light eye protection, (as well as the other bits of the "uniform"), as a minimum on our construction sites and there has never been any complaints. We were having a lot of minor eye injuries with dust getting into eyes, as you would expect on a construction site, and this went some way to alleviating the problem. Other more task specific ppe would obviously be specified as required.

Allan

Allan, the last few words are not directed at you. Any news on the 'edit' button, mods?

I put my job on the line some years ago because of blanket rules that some 'bod' had created without any real suitable and sufficient evidence nor risk assessment behind that decision - our company won in the end but at a cost noting that in all cases PPE should be worn if it is shown to be really needed

Make your case in writing to the PC; get their decision back in writing and then move on as you have done all that is reasonably practicable noting that you still need to keep an eye on the situation as you may have to change your position at a later date

Uniform: This may be a simple uniform sitiuation e.g. all site staf shall wear this uniform also noting that a uniform dress code should not put people at risk

This issue has been bubbling on for some years now. For most tasks on a construction or railway site light protective eye wear is not necessary. Basically it was introduced by those in the boardroom as a means of reducing their AFR/IFRs. It has now become the Emperor's new clothes. Those who state it has reduced eye injuries by x amount may well be true, but most of these 'injuries' are nothing more than a bit of grit or dust in the eye. The same argument is applied to mandatory gloves - but where will it all end?

There is usually little thought to the type of glasses provided - a one size fits all policy. Clearly, without proper investment in different types of glasses it can lead to problems for the user. There are of course other issues as highlighted by some others. I recall a chap painting a door on a station platform asking me why he was done up like a spaceman, hard hat, glasses, gloves and hi-vis, when passengers were walking all around him. I could only say it was the site rules, we were the PC but the client dictated the mandatory eye protection.

Fully agree with the comments regarding poor H&S management by the Principal - PPE is, and remains the ultimate last resort in a hierarchy of control.

I have worked in the chemical industry where light eye protection was a site mandatory, and in the paper industry for a US based firm who despite local Risk Assessment against a blanket policy insisted company rules were that eye protection must be worn.

Sadly in both cases eye injuries continued:
firstly on the walk from the car park / site gate to the employees locker (dust from car parks, adjacent industry)
secondly and more worryingly from the complacenecy instilled in the employees "I had my safety specs on" - "yes... but were they the correct protection for the task?"

Three former colleagues with damaged eye sight because of incidents with chemicals they were handling running down their face behind the company imposed protection.

Lets not forget that in construction cement dusts when wetted (sweat / rain) are highly corrosive!

Ray Rapp says: "I recall a chap painting a door on a station platform asking me why he was done up like a spaceman, hard hat, glasses, gloves and hi-vis, when passengers were walking all around him.I could only say it was the site rules,"

I know that feeling Ray. Having been on dozens of social housing projects where kitchen refurbishment operatives have had to wear h/v vests inside houses (where tenants carried on normal life) and struggle with intricate tasks wearing "protective" gloves, that in truth had the potential to become a hazard.
Have you tried wiring plug sockets with gloves on?

How do you manage the staff’s morale when they must wear Boots, Gloves, Helmet, Glasses, and whole body covered e.g. long sleeves. This is on a site that is open to the public with a visitor’s centre where the norm for the tourists walking past the staff is T shirt, shorts and flip flops or tottering about on 6 inch heels.

It is poor management, simples! It has been around for years and happens in all sectors, perhaps more visibly stupid in Construction but nonetheless can be seen everywhere. Our local bus drivers now drive around in (not too clean) hi-vis vests.

So much easier to say "just wear it" than actually consider what is needed and how to practically achieve the correct protection wherever and whenever it is required. I have never come across a blanket rule demanded, for it's own sake, by a safety anorak. I have found many put in place by managers and supervisors who think it is the only way to practically manage the use of PPE. At the same time thinking that they have solved safety if everyone is wearing the kit.

This example looks much the same. I have no problem with having a base line standard but where it goes wrong is if that standard doesn't contain an option modify where specific risk assessments shows it is not relevant.

Quote: I worked on a £6000 million project were we made light eye protection mandatory the only exception was if a worker was out side in the rain

That is some project indeed. I thought £1 billion was big!

Jon

Well said Ray.
Do you think it will happen?

Dear All

As indicated the use of PPE has been stated as a last resort for ages. I regularly see boards outside construction sites advertising that out of a nine point hierarchical prevention list, the controllers of the site can do no better than implement the least effective - PPE.

The HSE has tried to convince the world of work that the preventative and protective measures employers adopt to protect their workers should be based on the outcome of a risk assessment. Any suggestions to many construction personnel about actually assessing control measures using the general principles of prevention - as specified in law - is usually quite an education: although not necessarily one of life's more pleasant experiences.

As someone not from construction I have observed the following on those times I have ventured into the sector:

1 Construction is special and standards acceptable in other sectors are impractical in construction. So other sectors can provide decent welfare facilities; do not illegally blacklist workers for raising health and safety issues; can provide effective health and safety training; and many try to eliminate or avoiding risk as a starting point: these standards appear to be ‘unreasonable’ in construction generally.

2 If you're not from construction you know nowt of relevance.

3 The revelation from a study of construction sites that found the biggest single positive influence on compliance with health and safety standards was a worker's health and safety representative on site has - as far as I can see - been generally ignored. The researchers studied practices on sites in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Quoting directly from the report:

'The presence of a safety representative on site shows the strongest relationship with safety compliance.'

Ref: Safety Behaviour in the Construction Sector: HSA/HSENI McDonald and Hrymak 2002

On the other hand, many construction companies have adopted behavioural safety programmes which appear to be most effective in getting people to wear PPE - the least effective method in the general principles of prevention.

4 On those occasions when I asked how the CDM Regs requirements on clients to ensure ‘the allocation of sufficient time and other resources’ in the project to cover health and safety was actually measured, no one had an answer of substance. Thus low tenders get work and the project immediately starts with ideas on cutting cost. In this respect it is easier to buy some hard hats, goggles, gloves etc than implement a review of eliminating risks and then evaluating adequate control measures, starting with the most effective and ending the evaluation with the most ineffective – i.e. PPE. Many in construction appear to take the view that you might as well go to PPE straight away – cuts out the hassle of thinking.

Of course the idea of union recognition usually gets a laugh before it is ignored or – in the case of blacklisting – aggressively opposed. In a meeting of senior construction bods some years ago it was suggested one way of improving health and safety standards in construction was to have employment rights for all construction workers. It was fascinating to see the collective look of horror on these senior personnel when they realised the proposer was serious. Fortunately - from their point of view - they were in a good political position to squash such ridiculous burdensome nonsense.

PPE – treat the symptom not the cause – you know it makes sense!!

Cheers.

Nigel

Bob, I cannot agree with you that mandatory eye protection is the right way to go. Even if it was, companies should provide a variety of good quality glasses. However, as a rule they don't because it costs money. Glasses are not much good outdoors in the wet, steam up and for those who don't normally wear glasses they can cause other issues. Very often they do not provide adequate protection from dust and grit either.

There is always a price to pay and not just monetary with these blanket rules. Operatives as rule do not like wearing glasses for normal everyday working and it does little to engender good health and safety practices. In a laboratory they may be suitable, on a construction site it is OTT.

Well I'm with Bob on this one.

I've looked back over our sites historical accident data for the last 25 years to see what the introduction of a mandatory eye protection policy did for us. To clarify, these accidents are the typical type you would see when handling product, using hand tools, waste handling etc. Iremoved those that would be prevented by machine design ot other changes. The site does everything from chemical handling to contruction/demolition.

Up to November 92 we had no blanket LEP areas and an average of 56 eye injuries a year.
November saw the introduction of a blanket LEP policy in our worshops which saw eye injuries reduce to 29 in 1993
The policy was then adopted for all plant areas and the eye injuries dropped to 5 for the following year.
This remained pretty much the average until a few years ago when I did a six sigma project on LEP care and use. This saw a significant increase in the range offered including LEP with reading lenses - range is a very important factor in compliance, as was mentioned by a contributer earlier.
This financial year we have had one eye injury where a contractor failed to wear any eye protection while power washing a bund - supervisory issue

I've heard every excuse why PPE shouldn't be introduced the way we did but the statistics tell me that what we did was, and remains, the right thing to do for the type of eye injuries we were having. Based on the poor level of accident reporting on construction sites identified by the HSE I'd suggest it is probably the right decision even without the data but you MUST have an adequate choice to suit your varied workforce.

And that is where you and I will never agree. I don't think we should necessarily take action for low risks. It's got nothing to do with the law either, it has to do with being sensible.

I assume then you have also removed all stairs, kerbs, slopes, hot water, glass, bees, sunlight, pollen, noise .........................in fact I'm assuming that you've wrapped them all in cotton wool and put them to bed with a lukewarm, non-breakable, mug of milk.

I have heard all the excuses going about why blanket PPE is wrong but I throw this challenge out - would you take the decision to remove this rule based on the data we have?'

John, probably not if your data is correct. However, I have heard all sorts of spurious claims including a million man hours on a major construction project without a LTI or RIDDOR incident and I don't believe that either.

Safety practitioners must manage risks as they see fit, if people falling down stairs is the major risk then that should be addressed. Fortunately the aforementioned risk is not the most significant issue for most practitioners. Meanwhile, blanket rules for PPE imposed by suits in boardrooms or over zealous clients is the real issue. We cannot remove all hazards and risks that is a given. To what degree we do manage risks and tolerate others is another matter - but we must manage it sensibly and proportionally, especially if we are to gain the respect of the workforce. For instance, asking construction workers to cover their arms so they don't get sun burn, meanwhile they are melting from all the PPE and physical work - sheer madness!

Claire et al

Please note that I did not say that there should not also be the controls from the risk assessment - but that a simple additional measure properly managed can also be added to beneficial effect. The fact that an operative does not understand that they have continuinng exposure to a hazard while the public exposure is always less is the fault of the supervision and ourselves. We have not got the message across. There is the world of difference between an occassional game of conkers and painting overhead steelwork.

All the anti voices here still hold vehemently to the idea that we should not guard against hazards if they are too low even if a simple expedient will work.

Bob

John

Apologies, I did not write that particularly well and I really should have said something like if it works for you - all well and good. However, you can hardly apply one organisation's experiences or statistics to industry as a whole.

PPE, even mandatory PPE like hard hats on construction sites have a real benefit. So it is probably not fair to lump all PPE together, some is more effective than others but in different circumstances. Gloves are one of my pet hates. They are often not very useful in terms of dexterity if they provide real protection. However, on my last major project the standard gloves were flimsy and about as much use as a chocolate fireplace - but it was mandatory to wear them.

Nigel

Measuring the effectiveness of health and safety measures is very challengineg in itself. It is difficult to measure a negative outcome (ie no injuries or incidents) and anyway, as Cox and Flynn state: 'we tend to measure what is easy and not necessarilly what we should measure.' I suggest it is not just about offering an alternative for better protection - too simplistic. We need to look at the bigger picture - does it make workers appreciate less the hazards, do management do less to remove the source of the hazard, does over zealous use of PPE turn operatives against health and safety etc?

I have just returned from a construction site visit where one of our operatives told me he had

"heard of a Principal Contractor who has relaxed the rule on wearing eye protection to an as needs basis following risk assessment".

As is often the case with verbal communications from the "sharp end", he can't name the site, Principal Contractor, client or where it is. He raised the point as you would expect out of self interest, stating that wearing safety spectacles all day tends to give him headaches.
Has anybody else experienced similar interchanges with site operatives?

I'm not going to add to the already long discussion on the merits or pitfalls of implementing a site-wide policy such as this, however, no-one seems to have mentioned potential solutions to the policy.....

My suggestion is to include the impact-rated visor on the hard hat - most PPE suppliers provide this at very little additional cost. These are comfortable to wear with other PPE, don't mist up, and provide protection to most contruction type hazards.