Contents:

• Quality is a journey

• Company Chairman and Depot manager fined
• Fatal injuries decrease in 2004/5
• Noise at Work
• Mobile phones while driving
• Fire safety regulations reform

Quality management systems (such as those based on ISO9001) can be seen as a luxury that small companies cannot afford, but in many cases the costs of implementing the system are repaid by benefits in improved management practices. The ISO9001 management system model is based on the "Plan - Do -Check - Act" cycle attributed to W Edwards Deming. The significant parts of this that many small businesses fail to appreciate are the Plan and Check elements. Without a plan, all progress is based on good fortune. It's like making a journey without having any idea of your destination or the route to get there! Your planning will also include checking you have enough fuel for the journey (or the means of filling up en route), and maybe a relief driver if the journey is long and tiring. In quality terms, this planning is the establishment of business objectives, and the provision of sufficient suitable resources to meet the objectives.

Having established a plan, the Check element represents a verification of how far you have got on your journey. In travel terms, you would look at where you have reached, how many miles you have travelled, and how long the journey has taken so far.

If you have not got as far as you had planned, you may modify your route to take a short-cut, decide to miss out a non-essential sight-seeing stop on the way, or call ahead to say you will arrive late. In business, you should also take time to check progress against your objectives periodically, by using quantitative and qualitative measures of how far you have come. If you are not on track, you may need to add extra resources, or adjust your priorities or objectives.

These principles are included in ISO9001 for the reader who knows where to look. They are not "rocket science" but the application of good business practice. If your business is already doing these things, it's probably already meeting most of the requirements of ISO9001. If it's not, the quality management process may be what you need to help you save money and make progress.

For more information on implementing a quality management system, contact Andy Saunders at QES Connect Ltd.

HSE has released details of the prosecution of a company chairman following the death of one of his employees in an accident at work. The employee, a security guard, was asphyxiated by fumes from a petrol generator being used in an unventilated location to provide heat and light. The chairman of the company was fined £50,000, and the company was fined £10,000 for breaches of the Health & Safety at Work Act.

In a separate case, following an accident in which a lorry driver was seriously injured when a roll cage fell from the forks of a fork lift truck, the depot manager who was operating the fork lift truck was fined £4,000 with £2,000 costs for breaching section 3(1) of the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974. The decision to prosecute was based on the fact that the manager had not carried out a suitable risk assessment, and was not formally trained to operate the fork lift truck. In addition, the company that operated the depot was fined £6,000.

These cases highlight that executives and managers need to take a personal involvement in safety matters, as a failure to do so can result in their being prosecuted. Contact QES Connect if you are concerned that this could happen to you

Details of fatal injuries resulting from accidents at work published by the HSE show that the number of people fatally injured was the lowest for a number of years, and was 7% lower than in 2003/4. Although this figure may be gratifying, the report also reveals that fatal injuries in the manufacturing and construction sectors increased over the previous year.

Falls from height accounted for nearly a quarter of all the fatal injuries, which was no doubt one influencing factor in the recent introduction of the Work at Height Regulations. The next most common cause of fatal injury was being struck by a moving vehicle.

Although the construction industry had the largest number of deaths, the industry sector with the worst accident rate (fatalities per number of employees) was the recycling of waste and scrap, where the chance of being killed was 27 times higher than the all-industry average.

Regulations introduced in December 2003 made it an offence to use a hand-held mobile phone while driving, and most employers arranged for hands-free phones for their employees who need to keep in touch while on the road. (These do not, of course, provide protection from the small minority of drivers, including professional drivers, who continue to flout the law.)

Now, new research from Western Australia suggests that even the use of hands-free kits does not eliminate the risk of a road accident. The research found that driver's use of a mobile phone up to 10 minutes before a crash was associated with a fourfold increased likelihood of crashing. Risk increased regardless of whether or not a hands-free device was used.

Based on these findings, it appears that it would be prudent for employers to include in their company policy the advice for mobile phone use when on business that drivers should pull over and stop to take or make a call, rather than relying on a hands-free phone.

The long-awaited Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order has at last reached the statute books, and comes into force in April 2006. This reform order amends over 60 other pieces of fire safety legislation; in particular it repeals the Fire Precautions Act 1971 and revokes the Fire Certificate (Special Premises) Regulations 1976, and the Workplace (Fire Precautions) Regulation 1997 as amended. The new Order places on duty holders the general duties to ensure the safety of employees and to take such fire precautions as may reasonably be required in the circumstances to ensure that premises are safe. It also creates a duty to carry out a risk assessment. Therefore employers and occupiers of buildings can no longer rely on a fire certificate to tell them what fire precautions to take, but must make their own assessment of the risks and the measures required to control the risks.

The Order, like section 40 of the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, puts the onus on the duty holder to prove that they have done all that was reasonably practicable. "It is for the accused to prove that it was not practicable or reasonably practicable to do more than was in fact done to satisfy the duty." The starting point for this is the record of the risk assessment.

Duty holders may include employers and occupiers of premises to which the public has access. If you are a duty holder and have not got a fire risk assessment, or feel your existing assessment is not adequate, please contact QES Connect Ltd for further advice.

Produced by QES Connect Ltd. Except where stated, the material included in the newsletter is taken from freely available public sources. It may be reproduced without permission for non-commercial purposes.