HEALTH AND SAFETY CONSULTANTS
At BHP Group we have set out our vision to inspire a positive and holistic safety culture across your business with the aim of equipping your team with the necessary skills, ethos and values to implement that vision. This set of family-oriented values is what makes us different and drives us to make a difference. Our team of highly qualified and experienced consultants are practical, approachable and dedicated to our ethos and values.
THE UK LAW
The legal requirements for any business with five or more employees includes:
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A written health & safety policy
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Written risk assessments covering all significant workplace hazards
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Access to professional and competent health & safety advice, either internally or via an external consultant
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Suitable and appropriate workplace safety equipment
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Sufficient training for all employees
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Appropriate welfare facilities
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This list is not exhaustive as there are many areas of legislation that could affect your business. If you have less than five employees, you still need to comply with the law you just don’t need to have it written down. The penalties for non-compliance are numerous, including unlimited fines, director disqualifications and a possible prison sentence, as well as the reputational damage that invariably
Having previously held senior Health & Safety management positions, our expert consultants are knowledgeable and experienced in how best to manage health & safety within organisations. All our expert consultants have a wealth of knowledge and experience, gained through previous senior Health & Safety Management positions across a variety of industries.
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Our managerial package ensures that all of your organisation’s health & safety needs are met through the provision of a dedicated health and safety consultant, who will be present on your site, as often as you need them to be.
Our cost-effective pricing enables you to completely outsource all of your health and safety management requirements, meaning that you spend less on expensive salaries whilst increasing resource efficiency within your organisation.
Our bespoke managerial package pricing structure is based on economies of scale: the more time you have, the lower the daily rate applied and we are happy to spread the cost equally over the full contract period so you’re paying the same amount every month.
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Working in partnership with BHP Group provides you with a dedicated Health & Safety Manager at a fraction of the average monthly salary for an in-house professional assigned to this role. In addition, our depth of experience and expertise enables us to improve your own employees’ knowledge, which helps to increase their buy-in to the improved Health and Safety culture within your business. Staff engagement to new policies is critical as it ensures that responsibilities are understood and your business remains compliant at all times.
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What we bring to businesses is explained succinctly by one of our clients: “Having BHP Group on board means that we can focus on our core business and be confident that they are ensuring we are compliant and not cutting corners.”
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We are happy to help you either maintain or achieve ISO 45001 or BS OHSAS 18001 Occupational Health and Safety Compliance.
UK Legislation dictates that companies with five or more employees must have a written health & safety policy, (among other things). These policies must be regularly reviewed and revised and changes must be brought to the attention of all employees. If you have less than five employees you must still comply with the law you just don’t need to have it written down.
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Your organisation’s health and safety policy should consist of three key sections:
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The Statement of Intent
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Organisational Responsibilities
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Arrangements for Implementation
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BHP Group will work in partnership with all levels of your team to write your organisation’s specific, suitable and sufficient health & safety policy, as well as any other health & safety-related procedural documentation that you may need.
We will then review this documentation with you on a regular basis, usually annually, to ensure that it truly reflects your company and remains legally compliant.
As part of this process we will identify all roles and responsibilities required for Health & Safety compliance and draw up a staff Organogram that clearly shows which team member is responsible for which particular area. This exercise ensures that your full team clearly understand what your business requires from them to maintain both compliance and a positive culture.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require that all organisations with five or more employees carry out written health and safety risk assessments of all their significant hazards.
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We will complete this together with your staff on your behalf, on site in real time, ensuring that your company is fully compliant.
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Risk assessments must be reviewed if there is reason to suspect that they are no longer valid; we will work in conjunction with your team to ensure that reviews are regularly undertaken. This could be 6 monthly, annually or following an incident or an accident. We offer a fully bespoke training programme for both your operational staff and management team that will equip them with the knowledge to competently complete risk assessments by themselves.
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With so much Health & Safety legislation, risk assessment can seem overwhelming. We will work with you to develop the skills required within your team to competently tackle risk assessments and ensure that hazards are identified and reasonably practicable control measures are agreed and implemented.
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By scoring both the likelihood and severity of a given hazard then multiplying these two scores together, we achieve an overall score. We then add any identified control measures and reassess to measure the effectiveness of the risk reduction.
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Although there are several steps to cover in this process, it is simple when broken into its component parts:
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Identify the hazards
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Identify who can be harmed and how
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Evaluate the risks and decide on any control measures
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Record the findings and communicate to staff
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Review the assessment regularly
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The Health & Safety Executive’s main objective is to know that you have considered the hazards within your business. If this is written down, recorded, communicated and reviewed regularly in a clear and coherent manner, the method you use is of little importance.
Our consultants are highly experienced in fire safety. They have the skills to provide your business with a full risk assessment accompanied by a set of solutions to ensure fire safety compliance.
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The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is the over-riding fire safety legislation covering the majority of today’s workplaces.
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The order stipulates that all employers must carry out a full fire risk assessment, thoroughly examining the potential risk and spread of fire in a commercial property. However, Fire Risk Assessments can be an extremely complex and confusing process and the detail that is required can be intricate and exhaustive.
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BHP Group is qualified to carry out your fire risk assessment: – we work with you to achieve the highest possible standard to ensure that you comply with all legal and contractual obligations. Our team are fully trained and experienced and can select the most appropriate assessment process for your individual specifications and requirements. They can also advise you on any remedial action that needs to be taken following the resulting assessment report.
Method statements or safe systems of work are required under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and are intended to provide both the client and the employees who are carrying out the work with the necessary information to undertake the job safely. It is essential that all personnel keep a copy of the Method Statements available for inspection. In addition, it is the responsibility of company management to ensure that all operatives are aware of their role in the job, which is outlined within the method statement.
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Method Statement format depends on the complexity and size of the job and is intended to show how the planned works will be executed safely. BHP Group will work with your organisation to create and more importantly implement, risk assessments, method statements and safe systems of work. Remember, all of our assessment and implementation work is conducted on site in real time, thus ensuring it is suitable, sufficient and legally compliant.
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In our experience, this is best supplied in a pictorial format as opposed to a text document and we usually recommend that you develop and print bespoke literature or make this available on a digital platform so that staff have continual access to the instructions they are being asked to follow.
Many businesses overlook traffic management plans and although these don’t need to be complicated documents, they should be written and reviewed regularly, providing an honest reflection of the current arrangements.
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They form part of your risk assessment process, ensuring that all hazards are identified e.g. vehicle-to-pedestrian and vehicle-to-vehicle cross-over points. Planned control measures are then recorded with agreed deadlines noted for improvements that are to be made.
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All implemented control measures are then reviewed and their impact noted on the documentation. This process encourages the proactive thought processes that should underpin your business.
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BHP Group have visited a large number of working premises where no consideration has been given to traffic management, placing staff, contractors and visitors at serious risk.
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We will work with you to improve your site safety by providing practical solutions that will keep people safe whilst working within the restrictions of your budget. We also have the experience to work with you at site design stage to highlight the health & safety issues that should be considered prior to you building or adding to existing infrastructure.
Gaining or maintaining accreditation to a well-respected health & safety assessment scheme can prove invaluable for your business, improving both company and brand reputation, which in turn can lead to additional contract acquisition and increased revenue.
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BHP Group has the knowledge and experience to help your company gain health & safety accreditations. Having helped many of our clients to achieve their accreditation objectives, we combine specifically designed documentation and industry know-how to ensure that your organisation maximises its potential of submitting a successful application.
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We conduct all of the work on-site in real time alongside your team to ensure that a true reflection of your organisation is given and that the strengths of your company’s health & safety culture are accurately documented to the auditor.
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When training is required to assist in the application process, BHP Group can deliver this as part of your bespoke package.
Our specialities include, but are not limited to, the following:
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CHAS
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SMAS
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SafeContractor
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Constructionline
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Acclaim
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FORS/CLOCS
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This information can be supplied to you within a tender folder providing you with pre-prepared information that can be submitted following a sub-contractor information request.
There is a requirement under law to not only monitor workplace conditions, but also monitor your organisations health and safety management system and provisions as a whole, including; policies and procedures, employee inductions, training, consultation and communication, etc.
BHP Group experienced health and safety consultants are extremely well versed in undertaking systematic audits of workplace health and safety systems which effectively identify deficiencies in procedural and operational health and safety arrangements.
We use the approach of Plan, Do, Check and Act to monitor your business activities whilst on site.
This enables our expert consultants to draw up a realistic and effective report and action plan which ensures health and safety pitfalls are highlighted and addressed and legislative compliance is achieved.
We will provide you access to our software so that you can track your staff in real time as they action the tasks required to make the audit compliant. Providing you with piece of mind and an excellent tool to present at board meetings.
It is a compliance requirement to ensure that the health & safety of your workplace is proactively monitored.
BHP Group will provide practical and detailed workplace health & safety inspections at your premises. These will highlight areas for improvement as well as areas of good practice, enabling you to understand what is working well and where company resources need to be directed in the future to ensure a safer working environment.
The practical and physical presence of a health and safety professional on-site can greatly improve employee productivity and safety buy-in. This is because it not only acts as a deterrent to staff who may otherwise try to cut corners whilst undertaking workplace activities but more importantly because employees see a very real commitment from senior management to improving their health, safety and welfare.
BHP Group will provide a full and thorough workplace inspection report, developed live with pictures, highlighting problem areas and assisting with their identification.
Actions can also be assigned to key individuals within your business via email using our software programme. Managers can then login at any time and view live progress of the actions as they are signed off. We also offer a remote monitoring service where we remind your team of their actions if required.
Alternatively, you can work through the report in-house. The actions are listed in order of priority, allowing you to easily identify and rectify workplace safety concerns, providing you with peace of mind that risks are being systematically reduced throughout your business.
Risk Assessments and Method Statements must be acted upon to ensure compliance. At BHP Group we get under the skin of your business and provide directors and senior managers with honest insights and a reflective perspective on the status of company compliance to ensure that you fully understand where your liabilities are.
At BHP Group we are committed to identifying the root cause of any accident or incident and will drill down into the detail of how a business operates to establish the sequence of events and failures that have come together, causing the unplanned event.
Workplace accidents are usually as a result of either latent defects – those that can remain dormant or hidden for days, weeks or even years before they combine with other events and lead to an incident – and are usually systemic or organisational weaknesses, such as deficiencies in a safety management system; or they are the result of active defects, most often arising from individual operator error, commonly due to lack of training, understanding of the process or work pressure and where the effect is felt almost immediately.
