Now is the time to make sure you’ve got your health and safety in order!

With the HSE rolling out more inspections and the number of prosecutions on the rise now is a very important time to talk to us about our health and safety software.

Why now?

Clearly health and safety is not something to mess around with. Nor are the unlimited fines, fees for intervention and potentially company closing prosecutions that can come from not just accidents but having the appropriate paperwork to hand when a HSE inspector shows up nor being able to demonstrate to them a thorough awareness of the legislation, even if no breach has actually occurred.

There are many examples of recent notices where firms simply didn’t have a Construction Phase Plan in place or didn’t have suitable hand washing facilities in place. All offences are saved to the online public register where prosecutions are saved for at least 5 years! For example;

“Contractor – Failed as a contractor to plan, manage and monitor construction work – Regulation 15(2) of Construction, Design and Management Regulations 2015 Employer – Failed to discharge its duty under Regulation 7(1) of Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 – Did not control exposure of employees to Respirable Crystaline Silica – fine £16,000, Total Costs Awarded to HSE £1,377.45.

Check out the Prosecutions database and see for yourself. http://www.hse.gov.uk/prosecutions/

Other than a rather larger number of inspections (which you may well have avoided so far) and a clear focus on small to medium building firms, there has also been a large rise in the number of fees for interventions as well as a rise in the number of prosecutions so it appears the HSE has a rigorous regime of inspections in place.

Why health and safety software?

Health & Safety Xpert is the easiest and fastest way to ensure that you have everything in place to meet your health and safety requirements. This is because the software automatically lines up all the paperwork and health and safety precautions that you should be completing based on your job specification. Every document you could possibly need including Risk Assessments, Method Statements, COSHH Assessments, Construction Phase Plan and more. Then it’s simply a matter of filling in the finer details to complete and printing off ready to inform your site actions and/or saving to your preferred cloud storage provider so they can be on hand whenever needed.

Why the urgency?

The HSE have announced that their aim is to complete at least 20,000 inspections in their 2016 – 2017 annual service plan with the intention of repeating or growing this in the following year. Given that there are approximately 50,000 VAT registered building firms in the UK (ONS, 2016), firms have for a fairly high chance of being randomly spot checked. So best to be sure you’ve got everything in place!

I’ve never needed health and safety software before, why would I now?

HBXL have been doing some research into the common reasons that firms failed on inspection. We found that many, seemingly small things like a access to a loo, lack of a Construction Phase health and safety plan, or  failure to ensure that pedestrians and vehicles could move wit
hout risk has caused fines and failures. Take a look at the full article here.

What happens to my software if health and safety regulations change?

You’re thinking that having all your health and safety sorted for you, automatically, based on your job specs would be great. The peace of mind that, when asked, you can provide all required docs with no hassle would be amazing but what happens to the software if there are regulation changes?

Health & Safety Xpert is regularly reviewed to ensure that it is up to date with the latest regulations and all you need to do is download an update any time there are changes. As long as you have Support and Updates in place (which are free for the first year and include our award winning support service) then your software is futureproof. Never get caught out by regulation changes again!

Health and safety software from award winning building software providers

Want to know more about Health & Safety Xpert? We haven’t even told you the best bit! All HBXL Building Software products are integrated with X-Connex connectivity! That means that if you own EstimatorXpress you can import all the information from your estimate to automatically produce your health and safety documentation! Almost no typing required! Don’t believe us? Give us a call on 0117 9167898 and we’ll be happy to show you how and set you up with a free 30 day demo on all of our software. We look forward to your call.