Spillard News

The construction Equipment Association (CEA) has advised employers and hirers to ask Health & Safety Executive (HSE) inspectors to justify any demands for extra vision aids on plant.
 The move comes after the HSE’s London, East and South-East on construction sites to check that risks were being properly controlled, including adequate visibility from the operator’s seat.
 However, the CEA warned against a simplistic approach to identifying machines without adequate visibility. According to the CEA, current regulations mean manufacturers must already ensure sufficient visibility from the driving position for the driver to operate the machine safely in all intended conditions of use.
 “The CEA recognises that, because of the nature of operations in the UK, there can be situations where additional visibility aids might be useful. We have been actively working with the HSE with a view to developing knowledge on the value of these,” said Tim Faithfull, the CEA’s director of member services.
 Faithfull said that as a result, the HSE had agreed to draft guidelines for use by hirers, operators and inspectors to meet its specific concerns.
 However, he added that so far the HSE had been unable to show that inadequate visibility from a machine had contributed to accidents and that other factors, such as operator training and poor pedestrian segregation had not been more important.
 He also said that if any extra risk was established, the only way to address if fairly would be to amend the EU-wide manufacturing directive. “Otherwise local interpretations will undermine the Europe-wide harmonisation that underpins CE marking and allows manufacturing and allows manufacturers to produce one machine for the whole European market,” said Faithfull.
 
 According to the HSE, during the recent blitz on 10 to 14 march 03 inspectors identified failure to secure effective separation of people and plant, coupled with inadequate maintenance and provision of visibility aids, as the main areas of concern. This resulted in 55 prohibition notices and 20 improvement notices.