Posted By Dave Wilson The words "Associated Octel" spring to mind immediately, you most certainly have H&S obligations in this instance

Posted By alex mccreadie Sorry for the uneducated answer Barry but forget Guilty by Association V versus V but your moral duty is to stop it. Can we as safety individuals sit by and let people kill or seriously damage themselves NO. Get round there in the morning and stop the job worry about the legal position later. Regards Alex

Posted By Barry Bruce I agree Alex - the moral duty is what made me question the whole job when I heard about it! Pretty ridiculous that they let the QA Manager in without informing him of any of the hazards, even more ridiculous to have the monitoring equipment hanging outside the silo! Legal requirement or not - im heading up first thing. Cheers

Posted By Pete48 Barry, we then chose the cheapest? Presumably assuming that the owners had assessed the competence of the contractor or was it explicit in the arrangements? Do you have any practical experience of managing silo entry in these circumstances? If you do then you will know exactly whether they have put your QA manager at risk or not. No need for histrionics, moral crusades or site visits. A simple call to the owner to tell them what you have been made aware of with a recommendation to stop work and establish safe working to the standards and requirements that you know should have been in place. In writing if that is the type of relationship you have with them. After all, the primary responsibility is theirs, not yours. They may ask you, for example, to complete an incident report. Also don't forget that if you do have the technical knowledge and you had identifed that your employees would/intended to visit site and might need or be invited to enter that space, what are your risk controls is a question I would ask you. At the very least, some simple instruction in order for that employee to recognise and avoid potential danger. Something that was either lacking in or ignored by the QA manager if I asssume that danger did indeed exist. On the other hand if you do not have the detailed technical knowledge then you may well be relying totally upon the specialist contractor in which case I would suggest once again that you talk to the owners in a partnership approach and report the incident you have described here and ask them for a report including whether your employee has been exposed to any danger and if so what. In either case, why visit site? I do not have specific experience in vessel entry where the last material stored was vegetable oil so I can only say that it has been an education for me to think about something that I use every day in my kitchen as being an industrial hazard. I now know that it is. Is it the oil residues or mists from the cleaning works or the possible presence of inerting gases or al of them I wonder? What I do know is that continuous atmosphere monitoring and the use of either natural and forced ventilation and air supplied respiratory protection is part of an swp but not necessarily required for all vessel entry or at every stage of the works. Is it the same for veggie oils?

Posted By Guderian While I agree with the main thrust of this thread and the issues areound confined space work, as others have said I don't think the Associated Octel case is relevant. From memmory, I thought the AO case was about contractors coming on to site and working in a tank/vessel on a site owned and operated by AO. AO's argument was that during the maintenance/cleaning operations they were not responsible because they had passed the work on to the contractors. However the Court decided they were and were still in 'control' of the work. Storing product at a different site, not owned by the QA managers company is a different situation and I would think the company are not 'in control' of this maintenance activity in the way that AO were.

Posted By Tabs HSAW section 3 might apply because the costs are being recharged - and the influence of choice of contractor. You also have "guilty knowledge" of serious malpractice. This has moral, professional and perhaps even civil implications. Now consider the financial issues - can you afford to be involved in a corporate manslaughter case, even as witnesses? It costs a lot of money to pay lawyers to go through this kind of process. Compared to the costs of getting this right, it is a no-brainer.