Hi All,

I'm looking for real world examples/ideas as to how you identify foreseeable risk on various customer sites, prior to your employees arriving onsite. They would be onsite one to two hours, and a pre-work site survey is not an option.

What documentation/information are you requesting in order to write a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risk?

Thanks in Advance 

The tasks involve driving onto customer sites in order to carry out the service or repair of plant. These tasks are carried out from the back of a Service van using oils, sprays, componenets etc. and generally take place across a multitude of sectors e.g industrial, commercial, construction or even events settings, where mobile plant is in use.

Risk Assessments are provided for the work activities our employees are carrying out, and can be sent to the customer in advance. The customer also dictates the time and date of arrival. Lastly, some sites might be unmanned.

Aside from requesting the customers SOPs, Site Traffic Management Plan etc. to ensure our RA is suitable and sufficient, and instructing our employees to sign in/out and undergo induction, if provided. What else can reasonably be done to ensure we've considered all the risks, and are cooperating/coordinating on a shared site.

baal

So, we have duty on the client under Section 3 and/or 4 of HSWA  + duty in the Management Regs to cooperate etc with another employer.

Depending on the circumstances, a Permit to Work system operated by the client may or may not be appropriate, but somehow you need to have a system to try and tease informaton out of each client as to site specific risks that are going to be relevant to your workforce when they arrive.

PTWs are often overused. There was the day when I was an HSE Inspector and turned up a a 24/7 operational site at lunchtime to be stopped at reception with the explanation that all visitors needed PTWs. The problem was that the only person who could sign the PTW was the General Manager who was off site at lunch.

Security were having none of it when I explained my power of "entry at all reasonable times" and the potential offence by Security of obstructing HM Inspector. General Manager was mortified when he returned to find a somewhat irritated HSE Inspector! Can't even remember whether he made the decision there and then that THIS particular visitor didn't need a PTW and instead could be escorted by him around whichever parts of the site the Inspector wanted to look at.

So, we started by climbing up a staircase into the higher parts of a huge engineering shed. Arguably access to those parts might have justified a PTW but there was no locked gate, so probably not. General Manager told me he had never climbed this particular staircase before. "No, but all sorts of people have to and the overhead walkways may or may not be in safe condition." [There was a very good reason why I wanted to look at the overhead walkways and the General Manager was aware of my rationale - two recent accidents at similar structures at the company's sites]

But almost certainly you are going to need to back up any information that is exchanged by each such client with a process for dynamic risk assessment (by whatever name you call it) by your workers.

....and you probably need an advanced crystal ball to help you predict in YOUR risk assessments what client/site specific risks may be present.

Thanks Peter