elf and safety gone mad

You can take a competence approach to risk assessment. Instead of listing every possible risk you say something like 'only competent persons may use XXX'. Then keep competency records based on training and experience.

Of course we got awkward squad who said "how can you tell someone is competent to assess competence?" (the answer is "they don't ask stupid questions".

Neil

When I was a Pressure Vessel Surveyor the Statutory Regs for inspections called for a 'Competent Person'.   Well, there is, or was, no exam or qualification to produce a 'Competent Person', so it was accepted that the definition of such a person was along the lines of 'someone who has the experience and knowledge of the vessel in question, the likely faults and defects they may have, and where to look for them'.

I am not sure such a common sense definition would be acceptable now, although perhaps it is, I hope so, as there are too many self-important, over-promoted jobsworths in authority that would struggle to comprehend such a definition. It would cause them to think for themselves, something they have never been trained to do and are thus incapable of so doing.

Chris

Edited By ChrisH on 10/01/2015 00:39:12

I have a friend who is a qualified electrician here in Australia and has over 40 years experience at the job.

We live on the border of NSW & Vic.

Last year he was was informed that he had to obtain a certificate to climb a ladder in Vic.

The 'obligatory' 3 hour training course cost him $450. (+ the cost of a 'flouro orange jacket'

I think that the elfin safety mob are out of control and just another cash machine for people who are paid to sit in front of their computers and dream up another scam for the tradies.

* Danny M *

I have recently had to attend a 3 day course to allow me to carry on driving a HGV truck .This is an attendance course only so in theory you could spend the entire time asleep and still receive the Drivers qualification card. Every HGV driver has had to attend this course if they want to carry on driving commercialy .I have had a HGV for 37 years and my little finger has forgotten more about how to secure difficult loads than the guy taking the course would ever know .I am also self employed so had to take 3 days off work and pay £350 for the privilege . Mike

I'm not sure whether it was because when Elf & Saftey got started I used to live on the job (more or less) or whether the Boss thought I had just a tad more common sense than the next guy. What ever his reasons I went along and played the game along with everyone else there. For my good behaviour I also attended the first aider courses every so often. Later and upon joining another company as a Quality Engineer (worrying all the foremen every time I appeared on the various lines, since I had the power to stop production at the first sign of something falling out of spec.) I was asked to do the self same thing for them and plodding around doing risk assessment aswell. By this time I really didn't want the frist aider job as it's a horrible responsibility especialy if there was a genuine accident but I thought it over and decided at worst I would have to stay with the casualty and hope he/she stayed alive until an ambulance arrived, (worst case senario) or take an unearned break. Happily most of the accidents were of the paper cut variety or that they had a headache and needed A.CO.HOLiday for which I used to send them back to their boss.

Over time I weaseled out of it but by then I had tended a few bad accidents which were caused in the main by people being stupid. That's not to say that I'm any different to anyone else as there has been more than one occasion when I have stopped myself doing something really daft and one time when I didn't. I payed for that with my left eye.

So in the end it's a case of keep your wits about you, don't let anyone or anything distract you if what you are doing is something potentially dangerous like driving. At the end of the day we are all responsible for ourselves and those around us. Elf and Safety has done it's job if like us on here are talking about it they have at least made us aware, yeah?

Jesse

Edited By Jesse Hancock 1 on 10/01/2015 15:15:11

Elf and Safety is just a cross we have to bear now a days. its prime function to to cover the backs of the management or to ensure a clique can earn a good living doing half doing a job. The way it goes is that some boffin writes out the rules while thinking of possible scenarios. So some of it is so bleeding obvious that only a fool would not do this anyway, some of it is in the realms of IF this happened AND this happened AND this happened, we must write out some regulation which which, if adhered to, would result in a safe outcome.

About twenty years ago, all the Sparkies in my firm were only allowed to use glass fibre ladders, in case while changing a lamp fitting, a bare wire touched the ladder and they were touching some earth.. Thats half a job, suppose that wire touched THEM while they were holding an earth???? Ah, but its too expensive for the Sparkies to come in out of hours, so they could isolate a whole bank of lights to work on the faulty one.

The other thing is the part P of the building Regs., now a days you need to be a part P registered Sparkie to fit a new 13A socket. So how many people have died over the last 80 years due to them badly wiring something up? The best the IEE could say was 15 a year, compared to 3000 who die in road accidents. But it does provide work for electricians, who go round and measure the loop resistance of your circuits. Interestingly it also makes the other 21.5 million dwellings non-compliant. If it was important then all homes should be done. " No old bean, can not do, our electricians are tied up for the time being, we are keeping that one on the side until our work dries up"

Frank

Just before I retired from work I made arrangements to hire a 'Geni' and I was using a different company to which I had used in the past, the hire company said I would need to sent the person who would be using the machine to them for training (no charge I must add ) I explained that my Forman had been for training at a previous company that i had hire machines from Ahhh he said that doesn't count the training must be on their machine .........

Not being one who could ever resist a rant..................and part P was mentioned...................

I was apprentice trained as an Electrical Engineer in the early seventies. I went to tech colledge for three years as well. I came out of my training with a C&G National diploma in Electrical Engineering, Between then and the introduction of part P I have done everthing from domestic rewiring (Considered by all in the trade as rock bottom!) to heavy duty maintenance and installation in flour mills, gravel and sand plants, print works, food production plants etc etc.

Part.P was introduced by the "office of the deputy prime minister" a post specially created for Mr John Prescot. According to the website of the now defunct ODPM

"This legislation is introduced to stem the rising tide of electrical accidents in the home"

According to this legislation, if I want to carry on doing "certain specified work under part P", work I have been doing for thirty years or so, I must pay a large sum of money to have one of my jobs inspected, and then an annual fee to one of the "schemes of registration" to continue to work. The strange thing about this is that there actually was no "rising tide of electrical accidents in the home" In fact the "tide" has been falling steadily since about 1962. How do I know? I was involved in some research for a group which was originally consulting with the govenment on Part P, and whose services were dispensed with when they came to the conclusion that part P was a very bad idea and should not be introduced. The research I did found out that there were two bodies who kept safety data for electrical accidents in the home, RoSPA, and the now long gone Department of trade and Industry. When the DTI ceased to be they passed their accident database on to RoSPA, and Rospa passed copies of both databases on to me, after telling me that the data was far from complete, as it was based on information supplied by 12 A&E departments at major hospitals up and down the country. Nevertheless, the data showed quite clearly that the "rising tide" statement was totally false..

Fast Forward to today, and the Part P Training industry is really going strong, and now you can go from the dole queue, with no previous experience in any engineering field, to being a part P approved person (You can rewire houses) in just 5 weeks! Of course it is expensive, anything up to 5 grand!! Given the age I am, and my almost zero interest in domestic rewiring, I will not be applying Anyone who does will be in for a shock too because after they have finished their training, the chances of them getting a job in the industry are negligible, because the vast majority of domestic rewiring has now been done, it boomed from the sixties till the early nineties, then the market flattened out, and domestic rewires are a mere trickle of the workload. Of course all the work done during this time is not part P compliant and never will be!

Despite all that the new systems must be safer, or there would bo no reason to introduce them would there?

Well actually, they are not safer at all. Because the old IEE regulations (which were arrived at by senior electrical engineers, and actually contained a definition of a "competent person" who was deemed well qualified enough to use and apply the regulations (5 year apprenticeship, plus a recognised technical qualification and at least three years experience after the apprenticeship!) have been supeseeded by the IET regulations, the compilers of which are mainly manufacturers, not electrical Engineers (if you have the big red or green book, its all in there)

The IEE regs used to state, "any mechanical device fitted in a circuit as a means of providing protection against fault currents or overload shall itself be fail safe"

No such regulation exists in the IET regulations, and it couldn't because if it did, MCB's and RCD's could not comply with it, as they are not fail safe. This is a major flaw in thinking, and an example of piss poor understanding of electrical safety, because if the MCB or RCD does fail. and after all they are mechanical devices, the only protection left is the mains supply cut out fuse usually rated between 60 and 100 amps, and testing/calculating the "prospective fault current" and filling in the result on a test sheet is not going to stop an overload fire happening. A fuse ALWAYS fails safe! Use MCB's and RCD's by all means, but use fuses as well because they provide protection for the MCB/RCD itself.

The strange thing is that although I am not Part P registered, I am a "competent person" and can still rewire houses (part P ONLY applies to domestic premises) should I wish too. In fact ANYONE can rewire their own house, as long as they get the work checked by the local Bulding control electrical inspector,(it costs!) but they (the householder) have to test it, (not simple anymore and requiring expensive test equipment) and sign it off and accept responsibility for its safety.

So what effect has this cockeyed legislation had?

It has given the larger electrical contractors an excuse to dump all there domestic work. Talked to a NICEIC rep during the introduction of partP period, and he told me that out of twenty contractors he had visited that week, only three had expressed any interest in signing up for part P registration.

It has provided lots of jobs for middle management running the registration schemes (known in the trade as the registration scams)

It has made a fortune for training colleges peddling useless training courses with no hope of a job at the end.

On this note we can go back to elf and safety and mention that other scam, PAT testing. You will all be pleased to know that the highly skilled technician who does your pat testing could gain the neccasary qualification in just two days at college (no previous experience required). Any appliance tested is only proved safe on the day it is tested., most are not tested properly, due to poor training and there are no figures to show that pat testing has done anything at all to affect the accident figures, but on the plus side it has created a multi million pound industry which goes from the manufacturers of dozens of different test sets right down to the people who (during the days of the "back to work grant" were being offered overalls, safety boots, a two day training course and the required pat test instrument to get them off the dole!! If you need PAT testing, shop around, you can get it for as little as 50p per apliance, as the industry is now imploding.

Rant over.

I feel better now

Phil

Best not mention CE (esp. EMC , MACINERY DIRECTIVE ,  AND LOW VOLTAGE) then?

Edited By jason udall on 10/01/2015 21:22:46

Best Not eh!

I work in industry where the H&S is a joke they are so up there own with "cannot do that your not trained" (I've been doing job 40 years) but the biggest joke and they don't want to listen to me as it will cost them (the management) quite a lot of cash. The workshop is for the most part sheet steel fabrication and welding the overhead crane used to move large bits of steel into position before welding. Joke is all the hand grinders 9" and 12" + hand drills are 240 volt run off mains extension leads.

Hi Phil....that was the longest rant that I have ever seen on this forum.

But it was worth reading to the end, as what you said made some very valid points.

Well done!

* Danny M *

Thanks DannyM, As you might be able to tell, it annoys me a bit!

IanL2, I used to do a lot of angle grinders for a local steel structural company, all as you say, 240volt ones, so I know exactly what you mean! It takes me back to going to a fab shop where there was a fault on only to find they were using part of a building steelwork as an earth return for a big welder....................which had an earth fault on it! The fabbers were complaining about getting shocks off the coathooks when they hung their jackets up. Also remember the sparky I was working with (was still in training) telling me to watch my back as fab shops could get a bit hairy.................think it was the only time I was given a safety helmet, but couldnt get it over me hair! I looked ridiculous!

Phil

Again, topics like this make me smile, and, again, show me one of the many reasons i live here now, and not there anymore.

# Building scaffolding - bang some eucalyptus and bamboo together with nails, sorted.

# Building protective hard hats, steel toed boots - What? Sorry?

# Schools buses too full - get the teenagers and older ones to sit on the roof. 11 years living here i have never seen or heard of someone falling off.

# M/C helmet laws - only for the driver/rider, the 3 (that's 4 on a moped) other pillions/passengers - never mind.

# The most popular mopeds are automatics or semis, ie no clutch lever, so pretty ladies can ride holding an umbrella with their left hand shielding them from the sun, or mothers have got a better grip on their infant.

# Household electrical regulations - you are having a laugh, twist wires together and finish off with insulating tape. Or do it yourself, properly.

... I could go on...

They (like most EU technical directives) are primarily about free movement of goods - an approval gained in one member state applies EU wide (potentially reducing cost and complexity for manufacturers).

Prior to these directives, the differing H&S requirements of members states were an indirect trade barrier.

Hello all, another rant !. During 25 years working for the Forestry Commission as a mechanic, (now retired), I must have repaired , amongst other things, literally thousands of chainsaws. Couple of years before I left, was informed I had to go on a cross cutting course at Husqvarnas , along with some other mechs from the New Forest, just to be able to test run the saws. So, did the course, a free day out. Year later, the FC said they didnt recognise the worth of Husqvarnas training, so was told I had to go to the New Forest ( I worked in Exeter !), for a 3 day course in felling trees. Just to start a saw . If I didnt go , could only run saw without a bar and chain !!!. I didnt go, mentioning the poor taxpayer. Wan****.

Long ago I worked with an enthusiastic birder who had been an overhead crane driver at Llanwern. As I recall his tales of what happens when a craneload of coiled steel escapes, or a red hot sheet fails to reverse through the rollers at 30mph were fairly hair-raising.

Neil