IOSH EDINBURGH BRANCH

Minutes of 201 Edinburgh Branch Meeting

Craighouse Campus, Napier University, Edinburgh – Thursday 09 April 2009 – 1:30pm

Sederunt:

C Shiels           A Russell         K Misell           C McGregor    V Sinclair         H Pearson       R Innes

P Brown          J Hepburn       R Miligan         M Sturgeon     P Selwood       S Waddell        D. McCormack

M Bancroft      K Lloyd            L Young           A Bell               I Sinclair          P Gibson         B Morris

J Reid              C McVean       I Murray          M Grimmer     S Pace                        J Walls                        T Morgan

J Adamson      S Keddie         R Wilson          A Chalmers     B Johnson       L Murray         C Fenton

H Gardner      

Apologies:

A McLeod, B Howden, P Graham, D Sinclair, R Thomson, R Weir, R Lovering, M Dunn, E Scott,
A Sharman

1 Chair:

Liz Young took the Chair and outlined the safety arrangements (Fire) and reminded the audience to switch off their mobiles.

2 Minutes of previous meeting:  March 2009

2.1 Receipt

Anyone not in receipt please email Secretary; pearson@mabbett.com

2.2 Accuracy

Proposed by – Dave McCormack

Seconded by – Ross Innes

2.3 Matters arising

None

3 Group Reports

3.1 Branch Education Development Adviser

Liz Young re-iterated the fact as in the last meeting that it is not necessary to collect lots of pieces of paper for the CPD records.

3.2 Fire Risk Management Group

are holding an event on 22 April 2009 Lomond Suite, Hampden Park, Glasgow (time to be announced) dealing with Part 3 of the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 (as amended) and Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations 2006 including workshops & lunch.
Approx costs: £55 IOSH Members & £65 non – members. Please contact Paul Graham for further information: paul.graham55@o2.co.uk

4 External Events

4.1 “Health at Work: Working for a Healthier Tomorrow, Today”

Wednesday April 29th 2009, Central London, 9.30am – 2.00pm

http://insidegovernment.msgfocus.com/c/12F44swhMuwH8ZCO

4.2 InterConstruct 09

5 Members Items

AGM is coming up in May and members are invited to stand for posts. Forms are available on the website - www.oocities.org/ediniosh to download.

June Site Visit – 11th June
(No Branch Meeting that day). Visit to Forth Road Bridge. Please contact Ann Diment for further details: adiment@staffmail.ed.ac.uk;

6 Job Spot.

CALEDONIA SIGNS   -        QHSE Manager

Applications should be sent for the attention of Mr Ian McDonald, Caledonia Signs, Waverley Road, Mitchelston Industrial Estate, Kirkcaldy. For further details, please contact secretary: pearson@mabbett.com

7 From the floor?

A member asked what advice he should give to his management should the police turn up in relation to corporate manslaughter / homicide.

One member suggested that Maclay Murray and Spens offer the following. excellent practical guides if you register and request the publications.

• Guide to dawn raids

• Guide to handling regulators inspections – MMS emergency response

Link to website to request information.

http://emailinfo.mms.co.uk/go.asp?/.pages.knowledge/bMMS001

Another member suggested that they should contact their legal team immediately.

8 Guest Speaker

Managing the Risk from the Road, Cameron McVean of Ashton Fleet Safety

Max Bancroft of the Branch Executive introduced Cameron.  He had spoken to the Branch three years ago – at that time he had been a Road Safety Officer (part of the Specialist Support Staff) with Lothian and Borders Constabulary.  After 15 years service he had set up his own consultancy serving organisations which required policies, training and advice on driver and vehicle safety. 

Cameron commented at the beginning that this topic was very relevant now that the Corporate Homicide and Corporate Manslaughter Act had arrived –there was little doubt that fatalities while driving at work would attract the attention of the police and the prosecutors.

He would measure the success of his talk by the extent to which the listeners would return to their workplace and start reviewing policies and practices.

“The risk will undeniably come from a break down in rational human behaviour”

In his experience very few events were “accidents” – there was usually one person involved who had made a serious error.  He illustrated this with a news story of that day which involved a collision between a car and a motor bike.  The driver of the latter had died and the 93 year old car driver had been checked three times and had failed the road eyesight test.  He had been arrested.

‘how do you value your drivers’?

He felt most organisations didn’t place the value on their drivers that they deserved.  We should ask ourselves:

• Are our drivers?

• Poorly paid  (e.g. minimum wage plus 10%)

• Occupy a low position in the pecking order?

• Graded as semi/low skilled?

• Have little or no incentive to perform well?  Or to do more than the bare minimum

• Often get ‘the stick’ (e.g. fear of redundancy)rather than ‘the carrot’?

If the answers were mostly yes was this because:

• Driving is regarded as a common skill (a query to the audience revealed that 95% drove to the meeting)

• Drivers are easily replaced (so why bother with extra training)

Or

• Just a small part of other more important function within the company (e.g. newspaper photographers)

Were the rules applied equally or was there a “get-out” clause that allowed the “wealth creators” of the company to use their mobile phones while driving?

“One or two things to consider…”

• Even the best Japanese boffins have failed in making a driving robot so is driving such a simple task?

• A driver makes approx twenty risk sensitive decisions per mile driven – who was conscious of that amongst the drivers present?

• Mostly travelling at speeds for which they have no evolutionary training – only 4 or 5 generations have experienced speeds greater that 20 mph yet we habitually drove at 60 mph (=100ft/sec) and quite often much higher speeds.

• Your drivers are frequently high profile day to day ambassadors for your company – are you happy that the public likes what it sees?

• Arguably the greatest risk to your company is from your driving fleet except in some specialist areas.

So what exactly is this risk?

‘At work’ fatality or serious injury – the responses to the question “is this part of a work journey” which police had been asking for a few years now when investigating a road accident had confirmed what campaigners had been claiming for some time – a third were indeed “at work”.

3rd party injury or death – unlike the workplace where the employer had control driving took place in an environment where he had none at all.

 Extensive damage to company asset

Significant drain on admin and management resources

Measurable impact on productivity

Consequent ‘knock-on’ effect for subsequent years’ insurance costs

criminal prosecution and/or civil liability claim – there had been no prosecutions so far in Scotland – any volunteers to be first?

What shape will the risk take?

• A genuine mistake from an otherwise competent and valued member of staff?  In which case likely to be of low consequence.

• A deliberate act by a disgruntled employee?  Who sees no reason to look after a valued company asset.

• A series of events, mostly unseen and unexpected, leading to catastrophe?  He illustrated this from his own experience when he had swerved to avoid a pothole at the same time as a pedestrian fell off the pavement into what would have been his path.

• A serious breakdown in your management procedures?  Did we know employees who held down another job?  Employees who were carers and might find themselves at work after little sleep?  Were supervisors ready to step in and implement robust procedures to prevent the risk?

• A result of illness or addiction?  Did we have occupational health systems to enable and employee to talk about his problem and seek help?

• A criminal act?   He highlighted a recent conviction where the driver had dropped his mobile phone (while using it) into the well of the car, bent down to pick it up and swerved killing two people.  It was found he had no licence and there was a bag of heroin under the seat.  Could we conclusively say that no one like that was employed by our company in a driving capacity?

ILLNESS & ADDICTION

Recent stats suggest almost 10% of adults addicted to alcohol and not just for the evening but taken through the day to “get through”.

1 in 13 adults dependent on drugs (narcotic and/or prescription)

Many mix all three…  amphetamines to get the evening started, alcohol/cannabis during the evening’s clubbing and valium to slow down to be able to get to sleep.

DRUGS, How much do you know?

Cameron then passed out a quiz listing 10 drugs (prescription medicines, heroin, volatile substances etc) with a list of the effects and members were asked to match them up.  All had symptoms that would impair driving.

“just take one of these four times a day and that awkward rash will soon disappear” - “thanks Doctor”

Over the counter and prescription drugs were very much part of this – the list was long – anti-histamines, anti-hypertension.  Currently there was no level where driving was banned – the general requirement was “fitness to drive”.  Some EU countries did have a compulsory ban on driving and taking certain drugs above a prescribed level.  Did our return to work procedures take this into account?

Other addictions…

The dangers the mobile phone posed were well established as were the practices that should be followed to ensure safety.  However, investigating the internet that day had turned up a court case where a driver had used his mobile phone while speeding at 45 mph through a 30 mph zone and killed a cyclist.

The public prosecutors in England and Scotland had recently laid down that a fatality arising from use of a mobile phone would automatically attract a charge of death by dangerous driving. 

How about sat navs – were they an equal distraction?

The Worst Case Scenario:

As soon as this happens then you have lost any chance of showing policy and procedures were adequate and in place.  Like a murder scene, evidence is gathered and people are questioned.  Had you done everything in response to all you knew about shortcomings in your system.

9 Closing details

Please stay and have a coffee and meet your colleagues.

9.1 Dates of next meetings:

Edinburgh Branch:

14 May 2009 - AGM and “In the hot seat: real-time accident investigation and behavioural control”,
A participative, interactive live theatre session.

Forth & Tay District:

Programme still in progress

Helen Pearson MIIRSM, CMIOSH   Branch Secretary

Max Bancroft, CMIOSH Webkeeper