Posted By KJO Hi, Requiring any information or previous experience that may be available out there. We have recently had a situation where one of our engineers visiting a customer site, was bitten by a dog that was in the footwell of the cab of a tele handler. The dog leapt up as our salesman leant forward to talk to the driver through the half open window of the cab. The bite resulted in a number of stitches to the engineers face. Obviously there are legal issues here which are being followed. But is there any other guidance to ensure we can issue something to prevent this happening again. I have serached for any guidance on this and have come up empty handed. Help!!

Posted By CFT KJO What a nightmare and I hope the chap will be OK! You are asking the impossible for you have no control on what your people are likely to come up against whilst 'visiting site', although you would like to think you have. One would like to think that an animal in a cab is something that you don't need to think about but clearly you have shown that it is. You can only re-write your procedures and make everyone aware to reflect the remote possibility of a further occurrence, and I would suspect this will really 'fall on deaf ears' as from a likelihood point of view it is indeed going to be remote in the extreme. CFT

Posted By garyh Use a lone working risk assessment and SSOW; lone workers need to be able to evaluate situations such as this before anything goes wrong. Just because he or she is surrounded by other people does not stop them being YOUR lone worker. Loads of info on this. Suzy Lamplugh trust has good advice for lone working.

Posted By Kieran J Duignan KJO A very tough challenge, likely to be beyond the scope of a specific policy or procedure on its own. What is not evident from your story is whether there were any 'near miss' incidents prior to the accident you report. Like other readers, I imagine you will be only too familiar with the 'domino' models of ratios between 'near miss' incidents and accidents. So, this can illustrate the value of two practices. One is 'near miss' reporting by your firm and by all your suppliers (and customers). The other is a process of positive reinforcement to make 'near miss' reporting - along with management of the information it discloses every week - vital parts of the improving culture of your organisation.

Posted By Vicky Smith Was the dog a guard dog or just someone's pet in the rear of a vehicle?