The government has now announced its new ten-year plan to cut injuries and deaths in the workplace. John Prescott has stated that employers had to give health & safety a higher priority. The government wants the number of serious injuries and deaths reduced by 10 percent and the number of working days lost due to accidents cut by around a third to 7.5m per year by 2010.
These plans should be seen against a background of the construction industry, which is worth some £65bn. The ‘cost’ of health and safety to the industry is currently running at around 8% or £5bn. It is easy to see that even a 10 percent drop produces significant savings to the industry let alone the hardship to the people and families concerned.
As reported in the Financial Times 8 Jun 00 by Robert Taylor, John Prescott outlined 44 proposals designed to make health & safety at work 'a core requirement of business activity'. These include;
During a recent review of our software by HSE, we noted a comment that the HSE are looking for designers in particular to install management information systems 'like the CDM ToolKit' to manage all aspects of their health & safety activities. The HSE saw our ability to provide an on-line audit facility as being particularly relevant. The use of this to enhance the traceability and accountability of their users was seen very positively as a 'must have' feature.
We are currently redeveloping our web presence and have a number of new innovative ideas in progress to enhance our 'one-stop-CDM-Shop' approach. If you would like to take part in this development with your own ideas and to help us test them out, we would like to hear from you. We are particularly keen to hear from Planning Supervisors who are prepared to act as Service Providers. Please help us to keep in front with our CDM solutions and continue to support us as you always have.