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One of my fave statements....
Excuse me.... do you have a copy of the sites risk assessment to hand sir
Ah the look of weak bladders!!
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This is all useful stuff. If more people got interested in their own safety on site it would make things a lot easier for everyone. The obvious place for everyone to have a browse is the Health and Safety Executive website
http://www.hse.gov.uk/, - the downloadable information about working in excavations, regulations and best practice regarding safety helmets, and site welfare at
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/conindex.htm are clearly relevant but there's a lot more of note if you look around. The site also has links to other areas - most notably
http://www.riddor.gov.uk/, which is the website to visit if an accident actually takes place on site and it needs to be reported.
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Cheers Kid. It would be great if more curators took an interest in these issues and actually stated H&S requirements in their briefs, followed up by a few on-site enquiries. This might help to set a level playing field for all units. Quality welfare, happy diggers, quality archaeology.
Mr Hosty. Keep up the good work!
Mr Wooldridge. Good points, pro-active is good, but do it through your line managers and with a smiling face!
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WHAT! the company supply saftey gear! i even have to provide my own shovel and wheelbarrow.
deep
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Deep
Personal Protective Equipment HAS to be supplied. It's the law.
Personal Protective Equipment At Work Regulations 1992
A trowel, maybe, but shovel and wheelbarrow? What bloody unit you working for?!?
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Quote:quote:Originally posted by achingknees
It would be great if more curators took an interest in these issues and actually stated H&S requirements in their briefs, followed up by a few on-site enquiries.
No worries Aching! Health and Safety is everyone's responsibility on site, so anyone can and should raise it as an issue. All archaeologists at any level should be aware of what they are entitled to on site, and what conditions should be considered unsafe and/or unacceptable. Briefs and method statements for sites are usually just archaeological in nature, so H&S requirements are often given a blanket statement that the site operations will be carried out in accordance with current legislation and best practice. I look out for unsafe stuff when I do monitoring visits, but in a half hour visit it's easy to miss some of the day-to-day casual bad practice that often goes on (I was a digger too once so I do remember a few things to look out for!). We all need to help each other in this, so get informed folks! Once you know what the current legislation is, you can start forcing the standards on site up to acceptable levels.
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Quote:quote:Originally posted by achingknees
It would be great if more curators took an interest in these issues and actually stated H&S requirements in their briefs, followed up by a few on-site enquiries.
Well, also speaking from that curatorial side of the fence, whilst it's good to see that everyone is paying more attention to H&S (and let's face it, the most important thing about ANY site that everyone gets home safe and sound)I don't particularly want to comment on the statements in a formal way because I am not qualified to do so, and do not want to be held liable if accidents happen. Units should have their own trained and dedicated H&S officers who can deal with risk assessments and the like (or seek advice as required), and visit all sites to make sure H&S is being complied with. That said, I have shut down 3 sites in the past because I thought they were dangerous (and one of these I did when I was acting as a supervisor, so you can do it).
It's your life, don't get yourself into stupid and dangerous situations - like unshored trenches, unstable sections, bad barrow runs and so forth. Walk off site. Not rocket science.
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Just a thought-having read some shall we say, less than comprehensive, risk assessments on sites before, Should`nt units en masse be required to place a copy of the SCAUM manual on site?
As Mr Knees rightly points out-how are field archaeologists supposed to know their rights if all they have access to are the risk assessments penned by others?
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That could be made as a requirement - am I right?
Show us yer manual!
