Newsletter October 2007

HSE Visits Ai Solutions

Andrew East (HSE) visited Ai Solutions in September 2007 to review our CDM Management Software: ToolKit CS™ (Compliance System). We included a presentation of our latest product which includes the web based 'electronic Health & Safety File'. Our new innovation allows health & safety management for the life cycle of properties and structures.

Andrew was very impressed with our product suggesting that anyone running it would have all the tools required to manage the CDM process. We accept this as high praise indeed; thank you!

Our new product launch is underway with a press release and invitations to join us at Bradford Metropolitan District Council when we are doing a joint presentation of our CDM and eHSF Management software to an invited audience (more details below).

Safety Competence Schemes

The CDM regulations express a desire for the various safety competence schemes to work together and reduce duplication in safety competence assessments.

This is something John Murphy, the Contractors Health and Safety (CHAS) assessment scheme manager at Merton Council has already implemented with various schemes including SAFEcontractor, Achilles UVDB Verify, the NHBC safety scheme and SAFE-T-CERT (and in the last week, EXOR). Five months ago John brought these schemes together with HSE (who initially described their role as being a non-participative one) to establish the "H&S PQ Forum".

John wrote the terms of reference for the Forum who held their first full meeting at the end of September. Gordon Crick (HSE Inspector with the CDM implementation team who also attended the meeting) informed the forum that HSE were prepared to put their weight behind "these" core criteria based schemes as they could see this as an effective method of reaching out to an increasing number of CDM stakeholders. In particular with SME's, to drive up standards of compliance, simplify procedures and cut bureaucracy. To that end, Gordon suggested a proposal should come from the forum on how it could and would operate in a manner that HSE could support or endorse. Lengthy discussions took place which are summarised below:

• The Forum should be renamed to reflect more focused aims and objectives with terms of reference slimmed down and snappier.
• The schemes develop an acceptable third party audit.
• There should be a method for assessing the suitability of other schemes to join and participate in the group.

HSE agreed to investigate the possibility for the Health & Safety Laboratory to act as an independent auditing body to provide confidence that participating schemes are accrediting against the core criteria in a fair and consistent way.

The CHAS National Management Board through John Murphy have expressed their delight at this hugely significant development and are ready for the challenges it presents. In particular we welcome and embrace the opportunity it gives to CHAS, and the other schemes, to make an even greater positive impact in safety management across the UK.

CDM & eHealth & Safety File Seminars

We are holding free seminars hosted by our customers in Bradford and London to promote the Management of CDM and our new Health & Safety File Option. The seminars are by invitation only and each will be supported by the HSE subject to their availability. The seminar details are on our web site together with instructions on how to apply for the limited number of places available.

We are continuing to contact senior managers responsible for corporate and team management of CDM projects including facilities management and senior health and safety managers. If you would like an invitation or would like to register for a place please follow this link and select the seminar you wish to attend.

ToolKit CS™ Release 14

Our September Release including the product update is now available and has been distributed to our ToolKit CS™ customers. The product includes important updates to the basic ToolKit product as we have demonstrated to many of our users at our free workshops here in Leighton Buzzard over the past month.

The 'star of the show', though, is the new innotative Enterprise product that has included over 12 months of development work using the best of breed software products avilable to us. All the indicators show that this will become a standard for the majority of our corporate customers.

Customers are reminded that updates should be installed as soon as possible as indicated in our standard licence agreement so that they can benefit from the updates that are being delivered.

We are proud of our achievements in software development for health & safety management in the construction industry. We put a high value on the feedback and comments we are getting from the HSE, our customers on training courses and from our prospective clients. We ask that you, our readers, continue to let us konw your thoughts and opinions about the health & safety managment products we are supporting so that our development team can provide even better solutions for you in the future. 

Callsafe Services

Our partners at Callsafe Services have provided their latest newsletter which includes a number of interesting articles. They mention Corporate Manslaughter in their news items which will interest many of our users too.

New HSE Guidance for CDM

A new leaflet, INDG411, "Want construction work done safely" is a simple guide for clients on their duties under the CDM2007 Regulations. The leaflet is available as a free download.

HSE Training Guidance

HSE Construction Division has prepared a number of PowerPoint presentations for the construction industry to use to help train it's workforce.

The CDM 2007 presentations may be used as one-off presentations to a specific audience or given as a series of toolbox talks. Files are all provided as Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt) files

Latest Blog Entries

"Nearly 1 in 3 construction refurbishment sites inspected put the lives of workers at risk", said Stephen Williams, HSE Head of Construction after the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) carried out over 1500 inspections and took enforcement action on 426 occasions  in just two months of its rolling inspection programme. -- Read full article

A 20 year old man was killed on 14 September on a construction site in Plymouth, just one day after a similar accident took the life of an 18-year-old in Scotland. -- Read full article

Salisbury construction company Castleway Developments has been ordered to pay £43,715 in fines and costs after one of its employees died in an accident on a building site in the city in 2003. -- Read full article

Provisional figures from the HSE report that 241 workers were fatally injured in 2006/07, corresponding to a rate of 0.80 fatal injuries per 100 000 workers. The final figures for 2005/06 were 217 and 0.72 respectively, the lowest on record. -- Read full article

More Information

We regularly receive updates from our customers and contacts about changes to legislation, the latest rumours and so on. We try to be selective with what we pass on and acknowledge our sources as appropriate. If you have information of general interest in the Health & Safety, and particularly, CDM and Asbestos Management arena, then please let us know by e-mail if possible.