Hi all,

Just trying to get a general feel of your thoughts, and hopefully some compelling arguments, as to utilising the knowledge and expertese already in place in the Health and Safety section of the organisation or potentially saving money and utilising a Consultancy to carry out the works.

Potentially challenging times await many of us out there.

What do you think?

Phil

Based on personal experience, I'd keep it in-house. Whilst we all share the primary driver of putting food on the table, in-house staff are likely to be more pragmatic when it comes to coming up with solutions.

Hi
I think we have the best of both worlds in my Company - we have an internal Health and Safety management structure but also use the services of Mentor RBS. Im fortunate because our representative from Mentor knows our Company well - takes time to listen to any query and we have an excellent working relationship -I do know though from past experience, that not all consulting companies are the same!

Health and Safety is an extremely broad topic and it would be an unusual in-house health and safety advisor or team that would be able to claim expertise in every aspect. So whilst in-house obviously has the advantage that those involved will have close contact with the workplace and know the procedures and processes, may I suggest that what is also important is that they recognise that there are aspects where they would benefit from specialised input from an external specialist in a particular topic?

Chris

In support of what Chris says, I have to say that the most satisfying customer I have (as a consultant) is a largish company who has their own Safety Manager (who is also the Transport manager) and he brings me in 1 or 2 days every week to assist/advise.

It's a company with a wide range of activities and hazards. In the main I do risk assessment reviews with supervisors (to a timetable, something the manager just found he couldn't give the time to) assess new processes/equipment, I keep them up to date with legislation and bring to their attention aspects of H&S which they've never attended to, or ignored, or never understood, e.g. HAVs, PUWER, and doing specific work at height assessments. He knows he is ultimately responsible for H&S so pays good attention to what I do and takes most of it on board.

Just wish I could persuade him to allow me to provide more training and toolbox talks, that would give me another day per week :o)


JohnW

Ray,

as an "external" I'll argue that way. OK, we don't know your company or your culture, but I have found that two or three days of interviews, chatting and discussion will give us a good enough feeling for where you are, what and how you do whatever you do, and what your needs are.

As an aside, I once quoted 10 days to analyse culture/needs of a 7000 employee site (my biggest ever) and found after 5 days that I was not learning anything else. Stop. go to Think. Go to Recommendations.

One threaed of the interviews is always to ask the HSE person, or people, "what do you need ?"

Then we need to tailor our recommendations to your culture and your needs. That's our job.

And when it comes to recommendations, after management, HSE, rep and employee input, the "external" has much more weight and authority than the internal. Heck, you'r PAYING for this. so it has got to be good !

innit ?

Well, that's why we get paid the big bucks.

innit ?

Merv

Merv

As a practising consultant myself I am not knocking external consultants, merely highlighting the pros and cons of internal v external. The effectiveness of the external consultant would depend on their own skills, knowledge and ability to communicate with others.

A company with 7000 staff would be a challenge for an internal h&s person, let alone an external consultant. Notwithstanding that, if I was the resident h&s person I would be a bit miffed employing a consultant for a task which I could easily do. Yes, I accept that many companies hold a consultant's opinions in higher regard than their own staff and that could be a big advantage in getting things done.

There are no right and wrongs here, it a just a matter of choice.

You're not alone teh_boy. Most of the time I hire consultants it's because I haven't got the physical resource available rather than needing the specialist knowledge. I have also had to waste time in the past taking some very highly regarded consultancies to task over the quality of their work.

Nice analogy, I like it! ;-)

Hiring locums? Not at all! Think of the locum as a temporary replacement for your in-house advisor (who might be on maternity/paternity leave!).

We have an internal department to cover 13 current sites with another group site to come to us. Currently there are two of us, me as the manager and my administrator...

A tad busy, mind we are due to get part time help...

We also use an external consultant in any area where we are not competent. i.e. Welding fumes / LEV so that we have professional advice and help.

Long term, almost everything will be done in house as both of us gain experience and obtain qualifications etc within areas we are currently not competent in.

We have always used in-house people.

However, we don't have any full-time professional H&S people - no-one that's done a degree (or whatever it is you do) in H&S. We have people who have done basic qualifications (eg NEBOSH certificate level, not diploma). Personally, I think that understanding teh business and teh hazards our people meet is more important than knowing a load of stuff about irrelevant regulations that comes along with teh regulations we do need to know about in any general qualification. I can find out about regulations relatively quickly and easily, I can't find out about working practices and reasons why people do things they do nearly as quickly.

We have had consultants that we can call on occasionally to provide professional advice, or accelerate the learning where we head into an area we don't know about already. We very rarely call them in, and they are not retained, we just ask questiosn when we need to, and pay as we go (effectively).

Recently, a client has said that if we don't retain a named person on HSE's OSH register they don't consider us to have competent advice, so we're coming off approved supplier list. It is apparently irrelevant whether we ever need to talk to them, we have to have them actively retained, and quote a name.

So there we have it - the outcome of Common Sense Common Safety to us is that we're forced to employ additional consultants (either external or obtain an internal person) we don't need.

I'm just blowing off steam, and this thread is almost relevant. Sorry.

Ask them to explain exactly which regulation requires you to retain a name from the OSHCR? That's just rubbish and not what the register was set up for....