Do you undertake formal workplace inspections?  Geoff Davies outlines why health and safety monitoring is so important.

Why do it?

First of all it’s a legal requirement!

Checking that you are managing the risks within your business is a vital, sometimes overlooked, step - when done properly it shows you whether you're doing enough to keep on top of health and safety and shows you how you could improve things in the future.

Proof of regular on-site monitoring is also one of the things requested in pre-qualification schemes such as CHAS, Constructionline, SMAS, etc.

Who should do it?

Monitoring should be carried out by suitably competent people – it’s often a sensible option therefore to employ the services of someone like MD Safety to fulfil this duty on your behalf.

How is it carried out?

The monitoring services provided by MD Safety includes an examination of the following:

• Documentation - risk assessments, method statements, training records, etc.
• Physical arrangements - essentially a hazard spotting exercise, it identifies potential breaches of health and safety legislation.
• Observation of how people are working - this can provide an insight into the effectiveness of training programmes and individual and group attitudes to health and safety.
• Discussions with workers about any issues or problems they may have.

Any health and safety problems identified during the monitoring process is formally recorded in a bespoke Site Audit Report.

If conditions are identified on-site that present a serious risk to the health and safety of employees and others then immediate actions may be necessary - if this was the case, MD Safety would ensure that these problems were verbally communicated to an appropriate member of your management team, as well as to yourself, with immediate effect.

The Site Audit Report would identify appropriate remedial actions where necessary. Depending on the observation, a specific date may be set by which the remedial action should be taken.

If you would like to know more about the Monitoring Services that we provide or discuss a particular site that you would like us to visit then please get in touch.