This quarry near Rotherham has an established and effective safety committee, chaired by the quarry manager, made up of representatives across departments and regularly attended by senior management.
The committee meets regularly to discuss such issues as incident reports and statistics; site inspections; surveys and risk assessments; and suggestions for safety improvements. The minutes are displayed on quarry notice boards and circulated to senior management and action points noted.
Workforce safety representatives have received training by the trade union safety department as well as from the company, and have completed the IOSH Supervising Safely Certificate as a minimum. Many are also trained in carrying out task audits. Separate sub-committees are formed where necessary and a permanent transport sub-committee exists.
In 2004, the safety committee’s duties were extended to helping ensure that the construction of a new processing plant was carried out safely. That involved acting as a main channel of communication for employees and contractors. They also created and implemented a planned preventative maintenance scheme for their new plant, as well as a traffic management scheme; drew up risk assessments, safe
systems of work and a training manual for the new equipment; and selected the personal protective equipment (PPE) to be used on site. |