Health and Safety practices

It's not just the culture of compensation. It is also the culture of the need to blame someone. "Someone must be blamed"!

Today we seem to invent new words, phrases or misuse words to suit modern life. Risk Assessments for instance is a management technique. It is used by managers to assess risk.
But like the CV, 'The Curriculum Vitae' or more correctly, "Personal Particulars". (Why use French?) it is misused.
The CV was introduced by the Professional and Executive Register to summarise qualifications and experience when professional people applied for jobs. Now it is used by even out of work labourers and school leavers and must be as much use to an employer as a bull’s tit.

The Risk Assessment is misused in a similar fashion. It is a necessity for modern management at all levels because it shows that the responsible person did his assessment correctly. It can be a cop out for denying an event, or perhaps an excuse for not understanding what could go wrong, or not, because of lack of experience or knowledge of the job.

Now Managers, Foremen, Supervisors have always been required to manage but they used their skills and experience to judge the safety of a particular activity and that was the end of it. We know that going back, there were horrendous things that went wrong and some extremely dangerous accidents happened that could have been avoided.
But we learnt from them and laws were passed to prevent such things happening again. Eye Protection, Abrasive Wheels, Coffers, dams, tunnels, excavations, working platforms, hard hats, drivers rest periods, etc etc. All these subjects have regulations or codes of practice under the umbrella of the HASAWA. They were introduced to provide a safe working environment and most were introduced by the trade union movement starting way back from the Factories Act in the 19th Century. And now the EEC add to them with monotonous regularity.....

But the management of risk may be made without producing reams of paper and denial of the activity. A risky activity may still legally take place as long as everyone is aware of the risk and steps have been taken to reduce those risks to an acceptable manner.
And if something does go wrong then the organiser or manager has to justify their decision just as an Engineer or Architect has to account why his bridge collapsed. Bridges and Buildings still collapse but not as regular as they use to. Engineers, Architects and Managers are getting better. (I have just had a horrible thought. Could it be that they dont take risk any more and denying innovation?)

A negative Risk Assessment should be a challenge to a Manager. The answer surely is to find a Safer way of doing it!
Not "Sorry, can't do that", " 'Ealth & Safety! "
Say's Fred Spoon, "Here we go again"!
I can’t see us ever being able to go back to the days, when people in responsibility, could take unacceptable risks with their labour or the public.
And I can’t see lawyers failing to jump on the band wagon, every time something goes wrong.

Still in the end when things do go wrong we can resort to that other modern necessity.
The Counsellor..............