Safety matters

However, at British Waterways health and safety is something we take very seriously. As the company cares for over 2,200 miles of canals and rivers, maintenance and construction works take place on a daily basis. The mix of machinery, water, 200 year old structures and public access to our sites means that health and safety is something we can’t afford to be complacent about.

As part of our series of interviews looking ‘behind the scenes’ at British Waterways, waterscape asks operations director Vince Moran what health and safety means to British Waterways and how it plays a part in the upkeep of our canals and rivers.

Firstly, what do we mean when we talk about health & safety at British Waterways?
Health and safety is involved in everything we do and it’s not just about keeping our employees safe at work. It’s about the safety of all people who interact in any way with the waterway network – our 1,500 employees, our contractors, our volunteers, the 13 million people who visit and use the waterways every year and our neighbours.

Health and safety is our top priority and we constantly strive to find the right balance between keeping people safe and providing open access to the fantastic waterway network that we care for.

Are our canals and rivers dangerous places to visit?
No way! Of course there are hazards about, just like in any outdoor activity where there is the potential for falls into water or trips on uneven surfaces. The special historic nature of the waterways with original lock mechanisms still in use does create some hazards specific to British Waterways. However, as long as people take care as they enjoy the wonderful heritage and environment of the waterways there is very little to fear.

When we carry out a stoppage, how much time do we have to spend putting up barriers and signs before we get on with the work?
Putting up barriers is part of the work and not something that should be separated out as if it’s a discretionary element of the work. A stoppage site is a construction site like any building site anywhere in the UK.

There are mainly two types of fence barriers that must under health and safety regulations be erected to reduce the risk of injury to workers and members of the public. The site must not allow members of the public to gain access (the outer fence has to prevent this) and the inner fence barriers must protect the workforce from falls from height into drained lock chambers.

How much does complying with health and safety regulations cost us?
That’s not how we look at it. I could turn it the other way – how much would not complying cost? The next question would be how do you put a value on the serious injury or death of an employee, contractor, volunteer or member of the public? I was reading about the construction of the Standedge Tunnel recently and it was all about the challenge of the construction, how much it cost and how the canal company lost money on the venture. Nothing was written about the deaths of navvies during the construction and yet estimates (because no one is sure) suggest that 50 people died. Next time I’m there I might just stop and think about that for a minute or two.

Coming up to date about 18 months ago we had four extremely serious incidents where four of our employees were injured so badly they were lucky to survive. Thankfully all have recovered. Every incident could have been avoided with better planning and better risk awareness and it was a real wake up call for us. I don’t know anyone who would be unaffected by such incidents and not want to do all they could to stop similar incidents happening again. I know I was affected.

If you really want a financial statistic the Health and Safety Executive estimates that on average every workplace accident costs the employer about £10,000. Five years ago we were experiencing 50 such accidents each year and our focus on safety improvement has reduced this to 30. Good progress I think but more to do.

Do we have a secret army of box tickers who try to make things difficult for our employees to do their job?
Far from it. We are always looking for ways to streamline the way we encourage our people to assess risk and identify efficient methods to get the job done safely. Our approach is to encourage everyone to take personal responsibility for their own and their colleagues’ safety.

Our safety paperwork is under constant review to make it easier to use but you cannot get away from the fact that the type of work we do and the environment in which we do it has risks that must be identified and managed. We have recently reduced the number of safety advisers we employ and placed a greater responsibility for safety improvement on our operational managers as we are confident this will bring benefits. Our big challenge is to improve all our employees, and particularly our frontline colleagues, attitude to safety and avoid the risk of becoming complacent.

Why do we need to have health and safety policies when we can just use common sense?
I wish we all had a consistent level of common sense that could be relied on. We all have different views on risk and we all have differing capabilities and that’s why we must have systems and processes that strive to protect the majority.

Is it true that we love regulation so much that we invent new health and safety rules just for fun?
Not sure who’s idea of fun that would be! Every new rule will have been carefully thought through before introduction and we will have decided that there is no alternative. Where we have sometimes gone wrong is that we didn’t communicate the reasons for a change well enough and that can feed the view that we are overdoing safety.

Don’t safety requirements make it too difficult for volunteer groups and small contractors to work on the waterways?
We have to make sure that all organisations who work and volunteer for us operate reasonable safety systems to keep their people safe. For volunteer groups we have developed a way to grant them what we call ‘Self Supervising Status’ where we work with them to ensure they have a reasonable safety management system in place. We then know that we can trust them to act appropriately in caring for their people’s safety. Over 25 volunteer groups have now gained the necessary recognition and can now undertake activities with limited input from us on safety.

Several years ago we experienced a number of very serious incidents with small contractors and realised that we had to significantly improve the management of contractors. We decided that all contractors working for us must achieve an independently verified level of safety and environmental capability. We selected the nationally recognised Achilles verification process and all contractors working for us now achieve high levels of compliance which has significantly improved contractor performance. I realise that to some this may all sound a bit bureaucratic but it is vitally important that we take proper responsibility for people who undertake work for us and I am absolutely sure that all the systems we have in place are appropriate.

What’s your favourite health and safety myth?
That health and safety costs money. Working safely is much more efficient and effective than working unsafely – however you put a value on it.

Last updated: 02/08/2011