Safe

Safety always comes first, you can’t (and shouldn’t) argue with that. No one comes to work to go home any worse off than they arrived.

We spend a lot of time and effort in the lead up to a project making sure the safe systems of work are in place and that each task or stream of work is properly risk assessed and a method statement created – everyone should know what they are doing, how they are supposed to do it, and when. 

It is to that end I started a war on “just” jobs, albeit a peaceful one; I began rounding off my pre-start briefings with “remember, there are no ‘just’ jobs.” Because if something changes or isn’t quite right, we certainly don’t “just get on with it,” so why is it we still accept the “just…” job on site? 

In most (if not all) cases it is because these jobs are on the face of it quite mundane. Most of the time it is “can you just go over there and do that?” or “can you just go over there and grab the thing?”. Easily done, and in all reality the task itself isn’t full of risk or it wouldn’t be thrown about so casually. However, what risk assessment has been done? How is this person supposed to get to the new location and do the thing that has been asked of them? When they are there will there be a mountain of obstacles to overcome? Has someone else started working in that area, or moved the item to be fetched? The truth is, we probably don’t know but are taking a good guess at “it’ll be alright” and as we all know “it’ll be alright” is fine, until it isn’t.

Yet we risk assess everything and require everyone to be competent at the work they are to do. We risk assess working from height, we risk assess slips, trips, and falls at the same level, we even risk assess the use of kettles in canteens (you chuckle, but a full kettle of boiling water can do a lot of damage). We seem to risk assess everything except for those pesky little “just” jobs.

So then, the “just” job, “can you just go to the stores and get another pump?” (doesn’t have to be a pump but stick with it) Simple enough request. Except that implies the pump you have is either broken or there is more water than it can handle – either way it is probably now quite wet out. Yet the request doesn’t factor in any of the risks presented in going to get another pump in what, is now, a changed environment. Your mate is just walking over there to the stores and getting a pump, right? They know where the stores are, they know the pumps are on the rack next to the hose and connector clips, and the walkway is where it has always been. What could go wrong?

But it’s wet slippery, the working conditions have changed but the risk assessment hasn’t and to quote the HSE:

“Several thousand construction workers are injured each year following a trip or slip whilst at work on a building site. Around 1000 of these injuries involve someone fracturing bones or dislocating joints.”

Just from falling over at work. That isn’t falling off something. Merely tripping over at ground level. 

We say “plan for the worst, hope for the best” but we rarely plan for change.

So, rather than a “just” job in the middle of the task that relies on everyone having read every single risk assessment in the site folder; we can spend time at the mobilisation phase planning for change and not just the worst-case scenario. It is my quest to make the question “what if?” replace “can you just …?”, I hope you’ll join me and the many others out there who are taking this on because I don’t want to be at another incident investigation where someone says “I was just …”