Posted By Steve White
I've a new boss with a new broom?

Two schools of thought, and I'd appreciate your views.

1) Let the site manager know you are coming,
2) Unannounced visits.

I'll be interested to see if a consensus develops.

Cheers,

Steve

Posted By Ian G Hutchings
Steve

Both. But preferred is for the site manager to do the inspections. H&S people then do tracker quality audits/checks on inspections done.


All the best

Ian

Posted By Alan Woodage
I disagree with the above points,
I have been on sites where activities had been postponed for the day or people sent for their breakfast when inspections were planned. I will never go for the easy route when we are dealing with peoples safety. How can you ask the site manager to monitor his own safety, when he is under pressure form time, delivery, budgets and clients, even the best site managers will let something slip. It is all too easy for site managers to falsify audit able paper trails and what use are they? All a paper trail gives is yesterdays picture not today's. I personally always do planned visits at the start of the project to get things set up and running but once a project is underway I would not plan a visit as it will not give me or my directors an accurate picture of site performance. If people feel that unplanned visits are spying or management trying to catch them out, then i would really question the culture of my organisation. Don't forget it's not all about telling people where they are going wrong, stop some guy's on site and thank them for there diligence and behaviour when they are performing well. Ask yourself why do people see us as the bad cops?

Posted By Tracey C
Hi Steve
I would do both. I take it you have not visited this site before? For the first visit i usually book it in weeks in advance, then if i find something i don't like i do some unannounced visits. If i get a feel that a site manager is not very switched on and pro-active with health and safety i tend to spend more time at their site and most of the visits will be unannounced.

Cheer
T

Posted By Raymond Rapp
I never deliberately choose either method. Sometimes I have no option but to inform people I am making a visit, other occasions I just turn up.

I believe it is important to have a good working relationship with others and covert activities do not promulgate co-operation. That said, if I suspected something or it was reported to me, then it would be incumbent of me to pay an ad hoc visit.

Regards

Posted By Pete48
Some interesting stuff here since my post this morning.
The style of any visit is important and positive reinforcement is great as long as the context is right; otherwise it can sound most patronising.
My learnt experience is that when you have a positive culture, then line management demands both types of support from you as they recognise the benefits of a balanced programme.

If you don't yet have that culture well then:
-the line managers don't like surprises and complain about being victimised
-and the H&S unit gets twitchy because they think they are being hood winked about the state of safety unless they turn up without warning.

As others have given examples for, this really is a "horses for courses" subject. The trick is spotting which horse is running well today without forgetting there is more than one horse to choose from.