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Workplace safety is a crucial but frequently overlooked consideration when running a haulage depot. To reduce the risk of accidents, employers need to raise the profile of safety issues among the workforce.
Haulage depots are high-risk areas in which to work. The need to meet tight deadlines is often uppermost in the minds of employees, pushing safety procedures down their list of priorities. Yet moving lorries, heavy loads and forklift trucks in a confined space is potentially very dangerous, particularly when customers are in the vicinity.
Dark, rainy mornings and evenings add to the likelihood of accidents. Drivers will be tempted to ignore checks on such things as trailer couplings, roping and sheeting to avoid becoming wet and cold. "They will just reverse back under the trailer and will think everything is OK because they think they heard the fifth wheel close," says Roger Darling, general sales manager of coupling maker VBG. "Just because one piece of metal has hit another does not mean that it is anywhere near closed.
"It is particularly important that as well as doing the simple things, drivers do the visual checks and put the safety clips on as well," he says. Because a mistake made in the haulage depot is not always immediately apparent, it can lead to accidents on the highway. In the case of vehicles which are incorrectly loaded or coupled, the consequences can be catastrophic.
Encouraging a sense of responsibility about safety among employees helps avoid such accidents. According to the British Safety Council, this depends on two-way communica
tion between management and employees. "Periodic tours of the workplace, including vehicle inspections, for example, should always involve employees," says its safety guide on workplace transport. "If you spend all day delivering to factories it is you, in most cases, who will be aware of new hazards in a loading bay and not management."
Employers can demonstrate that they are keeping their side of the bargain by closely monitoring drivers' hours. This will reduce the risk of accidents caused by excessive fatigue.
Nigel Rogers, assistant general secretary of the United Road Transport Union, says accidents in haulage yards usually result from haphazard loading and unloading. "People tend to do balancing acts, standing on pallets and that sort of thing," he says.
Last year, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) ran a nine-month campaign to improve the safety of workplace transport. Craig McFarlane, one of the organisers, says a key message to emerge was that many employees did not recognise vehicles in the workplace as a safety risk "Because cars and vehicles are so common, they almost don't notice them." Roger Ribbings, of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) describes haulage yards as "hazard,rich environments", particularly among smaller firms which have not got the management resources to understand their problems and obligations. "They are hard-pressed to know what they should be doing and tend to need help from outside.
"Very often, we find that people think it is a bureaucratic minefield but once you have grasped the basic principals, it is much less complex than people might at first imagine."
Every employer must carry out "risk assessment" to define where working activities pose a risk to employees, customers and the general public and then evaluate existing precautions to show whether they are adequate or whether more are needed. This could, for example, involve improving the depot's security to prevent children running into the yard.
Some hazards can be eliminated very simply, such as prohibiting vehicle movements in some areas, changing the layout of the workplace and introducing separate pathways for pedestrians. Others, such as an unsafe method of unloading a trailer, may be difficult to detect.
Guides produced by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) outline the sort of measures that are necessary to manage vehicle safety in the workplace. But John Jubber, quality and environmental systems manager for the Road Haulage Association, says these do not always address the particular needs of the road transport industry. As a result, the RHA is offering a new package of health and safety measures to its members from November. This will include on-site health and safety audits.
"Transport companies need someone who understands the transport industry and can apply health and safety legislation to their particular operations," says Jubber. "We will try to give them a prioritised action plan so they can address the key issues and establish their own health and safety plan."
West Bromwich-based Fellows Transport and Trading has helped pilot the new audits. "1 think it was an advantage to have someone from outside come and offer some constructive criticism about something we thought we were doing in 'apple pie' fashion," says managing director Ellis Fellows. "It highlights the areas where you are lacking."
These ranged from an uneven surface where fork-lifts operated to a glass door at the bottom of some stairs. Some serious risks still remain, however. Over the past seven years, two of Fellows' employees have been off work as a result of falling off the back of trailers when loading and sheeting up. Constructing a platform from which to work from would be impractical because his vehicles are all different sizes.
Another key area of concern for hauliers is safety in the workshop and paintshop. Last year, the HSE published an analysis of accidents among motor vehicle repair workers and estimated that as many as 7,500 of them were being seriously injured every year. It said accident figures over the past four years made "grim reading" but concluded that significant improvements could be achieved by using common sense.
"For example, it is normally obvious when the gangway is obstructed or oil has been spilt where people have to work. The need is to manage the work either so that obstructions are not created or oil is not split in the -first place or they are dealt with immediately by the people responsible."
0 by Guy Sheppard