Spillard News

The Quarry industry is calling for a host of safety upgrades in all the plant used on its sites.
 The drive comes as part of its Hard Target initiative, which aims to halve the number of accidents in quarries and processing sites within five years.
 The quarries National Joint Advisory Committee, compromising quarry firms, safety authorities and suppliers, is proposing stringent safety standards for quarry plant in areas from visibility to safe access.
 Among the features it wants as standard on machine from telehandlers to dump tricks are emergency exits and ladders, ground level access for all routine maintenance points and the use of seatbelts.
 The committee said:” If the safety performance of industry is to improve further it is critical that the design of mobile plant and the related safety features are improved.”
 Among its recommendations are: 360 degrees vision at 1 m out by 1 m up; inclined stairways to access the cab and a second means of emergency exit; a visible seatbelt indicator; a back-up circuit to allow the operator to steer the machine to safety in event of engine shutdown and guardrails and non-slip surfaces for any platforms on the machine.
  The extent and severity of the proposals has been greeted with alarm from manufacturers, who say that such design changes must go through proper processes of standardisation.
 Tim Faithfull, technical spokesman for the Construction Equipment Association, said:    “Obviously manufacturers welcome all safety initiatives but design adaptations need to go via the standardisation route.
 “If design changes are made, there are a lot of users to consider. Those changes will apply to users not just in quarries but throughout construction not just in the UK either.”
 Colin Wood, chief executive of the Construction Plant-hire Association, said:” This can not only apply to new equipment. Our members could not afford to retro-fit all this.”