There’s a lurking shadow that follows you everywhere you go in the UK. It restricts your movements and theoretically keeps you from death. It’s your best friend. It’s your worst nightmare (okay, maybe not). It’s health & safety!
Not to be confused with health and/or safety.
Perhaps it’s just from growing up in a litigious society, but healthy & safety to me seems like an elaborate set of rules to keep corporations from being sued. In reality, it’s supposed to be a complex check on what will happen if (and when!) things go horribly wrong.
But what does that even mean? Good question. Here at work we have health & safety officers. I’m pretty sure they’re the last ones to leave the floor in case of a fire, and they probably have some sort of input in the health & safety manual, which tells you all sort of things (I’m just assuming, I haven’t actually looked through any). I imagine it involves advice such how to lift boxes and what types of fire extinguishers to use with different fires.
This is all well and good, perhaps familiar to non-health & safety workplaces. But wait, there’s more. Health & safety becomes particularly annoying when attempting to do out of the classroom university activities. When coming up with our proposal for data collection last year, we had to fill out a health & safety form. This involves a) listing risks we would face, b) formulating the level of possible harm from the risk, c) guessing the likelihood of it happening, d) calculating a death factor (not what it’s actually called), and e) coming up with things you can do to mitigate the risk. So, one could assume that while watching buses in Southampton, getting hit by a bus might be a risk. If this were to happen, you would be seriously harmed (3), but it may not be very likely (1). To minimize risk you might not stand in the street. And this is how it goes.
Now I’m not sure what sort of good lengthy health & safety procedure have brought about, but I can only assume that people were extremely prone to death before they came along. It’s destined to be mocked by some (me!) and taken very seriously by others. I can only assume that Gareth was the health & safety officer at Wernham Hogg (yes, I had to look up the name of the company...).
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Anglo Mango and Busy Miss Lizzie
The true story of what happens when I stop being in America, and start getting English.
Anglo Mango and Busy Miss Lizzie
Hello!
The Anglo Timeline
- September 2006 - Arrive in Southampton
- October 2006 - Start course
- February 2007 - Amsterdam Passport Incident
- May 2007 - Start dating Mark
- June 2007 - Finish taught course
- September 2007 - Move to London
- September 2007 - Start work
- December 2007 - Turn in dissertation
- February 2008 - Visa extended
- June 2008 - Move to second London place
- October 2008 - Move to new work group
- January 2009 - Move into new flat
Visits & Travels
- September 2006 - London
- October 2006 - Winchester, Salisbury, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth
- December 2006 - Oxford, Chichester
- February 2007 - Kelly and MA visit, New Forest, Bath, Amsterdam
- March 2007 - Brighton
- April 2007 - Family visit, Lisa visit, Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Beaulieu, Uttoxeter
- May 2007 - Madrid!
- June/July 2007 - Portland, Seattle
- December 2007 - Portland
- February 2008 - Munich
- March 2008 - Canterbury, Switzerland
- April/ May 2008 - Family visit, Paris, Seattle
- July 2008 - Edinburgh
- August 2008 - Kari visit, Dublin, Malahide
- Novermber/December 2008 - Portland, Las Vegas
- February 2009 - Barcelona
3 comments:
And I thought the US was bad...
Much like QA, H+S exists to avoid problems for the terminally stupid (e.g. if one was going to stand in the road to count the mentioned buses then perhaps natural selection should really be thinning the herd there). In the absence of covering all aspects of stupidity, it exists to make sure that in the event of disaster, blame can be passed on to the appropriate person.
Clearly, you haven't had the fun of a Design Risk Assessment yet. Much like a standard one but is for the designer to complete. The last one I did was 15 pages! My understanding is that it would avoid the inclusion in a project of things and processes which can pose a risk, such as a wall across the mainline of a road (which I think frankly a good designer should be doing anyway) and if things can't be avoided then consider mitigating measures, such as put a warning sign up.
Nice idea but unnecessary paperwork and red tape. It's what the UK is built on!
I am pro health and safety as it makes people stop and think about their actions, and if their actions can affect themselves or others.
For instance when I worked in Italy (school ski trips) the teachers complained that they had to fill in too many health and safety forms about the welfare of the children they take on holiday. After seeing the accidents that some of them had I (if I was a parent) would be very relived that the school had had to carry out a full health and safety audit for the trip – and therefore knew what to do and who would do what if something bad happened. It also stops parents from passing blame to the school if their child had an accident (if all procedures happened correctly).
Also health and safety at work always involves how to carry a box or to sit at your desk – for instance the health and safety person here had my desk raised as it was too low! If that stops me from having a bad back in the future I am very pro health and safety.
I think the Soton Uni ones was also partly to get you used to health and safety forms as much as anything – plus the university don’t want you disappearing off to interview random people without making sure the student has thought about it properly…i.e. when I did my undergrad I had to deliver questionnaires to some of the most deprived areas in Portsmouth and they wouldn’t sign it off unless I did it with someone else.
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