waar 'appened to me thread?

the point a was trying to make was that safety is an integral part of business, so why try to present a deconstructed version? Time for a pint, bonny lad, eh? and some strippers..... after the bingo of course!...

I've just looked back at the last four presentations I've written and was surprised to discover that I only used 'safety' once other than a couple of references to the HASWA and Management regs. This was on presentations on topics as diverse as glove selection, radiological versus conventional hazards, risk assessment and societal risk perception.

Hi Wizard, I agree there are too many complacent attitudes in industry, compounded by generic documentation which no one really takes any notice of until...bang, it's too late. For the record, the Deepwater Horizon report highlights a number of issues which would be found in most major disasters in some shape or form. Learning lessons from previous incidents is the most overly used term in accident aetiology. Furthermore, the report highlights poor decision making, poor procedures, a lack of a credible fail safe system, poor training and lack of awareness of the risks by the regulators. Sounds all too familiar. Ray

Kieran Thanks for your input and I think we have finally agreed on something! What I must add, is that the decision making process is not a substitute for an organisation's lack of investment in technology, equipment, procedures, training and so on. Workers cannot be expected to make the right decisions if they are interfacing with such obvious latent failures. Human failure - root cause or last line of defence?

I keep saying you can present without the S, ie safety word, but the Mods keep hiding my post. It seems Xmas spirit means that we need to be very careful about our wording in future. Bob

Bob, sure can do a presentation without the 'S' word, but why would you, what is the point? If I went to see a presentation on transport I would not be surprised if the T word was used copiously. Has it now come down to we as practitioners are too ashamed or embarrassed to use the word safety.

In reply to Ray's question at #14 I hope the answer is an emphatic no for everybody who works in OS&H and further afield if they have some understanding and care for what occupational safety is really about. When conducting training sessions and briefings it might be worth asking those present what they understand by the word 'safety' in order to discern misperceptions and then deal with them. A comon theme on this forum is 'health & safety' as (mis)portrayed in the media, etc and often mis-used for all sorts of reasons, e.g. as spurious grounds to justify an unpopular management decision which in reality has little or no connection with safety. Unfortunately such misleading protrayals over time almost certainly tend to reinforce a negative impression among readers and viewers of media sources. For example on TV last night (Sat 17th Dec) I saw the opening few minutes of what seemed to be a nostalgic review of "Top of the Pops" during past Christmases over the years. One old clip showed someone playing an upright piano with lit candles in old style brass holders over the keyboard. The commentary about the clip included a suggestion that 'health & safety' nowadays wouldn't allow such naked candles in the studio! Absolute nonsense in my opinion as the naked candle flames surely posed negligible risk in their setting. The same will apply to the many candles likely to be used in numerous homes, churches, etc during Christmas and New Year if they're in stable holders and away from readily combustible materials. By contrast having live candles on real or artificial Christmas trees isn't sensible unless the trees are suitably treated or made of fire retardant materials. Surely most people would agree with this stance if the risk involved is explained to and discussed with them. Also, I share boblewis's pet hate about OS&H law and codes of practice being quoted in depth during training courses and briefing sessions. As mentioned on this forum from time to time, my colleagues and I rarely mention the law, etc when delivering OS&H training. To use an analogy, most of us know that UK law requires seat belts to be used in most vehicles, and why. However, I guess that most people like myself neither know nor care which particular law is involved. Why should we? On a similar basis, why should we expect non-OS&H people to know about specific OS&H laws. All that most people need to know about the 1974 Act is that its most important parts are about employer obligations to employees and also non-employees who may be affected by work activities, and that employees also have obligations to themselves and others. If people are keen or need to know which sections of the 1974 Act relate to what obligations, etc., they can readily find out from various sources, including OS&H professionals.

My opinion is that it is not always necessary to use the word Safety, Health & Safety, H&S in a safety presentation. It is not about embarrassment but rather that if we are attempting to ensure H&S is integrated into day to day controls then why always focus on identifying it as 'safety'. That can have the effect of re-inforcing the perception that safety is additional to the real work. For example, I did some refresher sessions around Fire Safety for office staff. I called them 'Staying Alive'. Never mentioned the laws or duties, never mentioned fire risk assessments, no horror videos of fires burning accompanied by the science of fire blurb. I focused on what was provided to help them stay alive and what they needed to do to stay alive. We then explored the reasons why if they asked. Almost all said it was the most sensible fire safety refresher session they had attended. Like Graham and Ray I have never quite understood why the law is relied upon as the main convincer and so consistently. I cannot remember a financial session that concentrated on the finance laws. They all focused on what you could and couldn’t do within the company controls. It is, then, all the more surprising that so many safety presentations use that first few minutes to bore the audience with loads of legal references especially when you consider the facts of attention span of audiences. P48