Monday 6 April 2009

Health & Safety from the bottom up


Deep joy. Who could have imagined that bottom scraping would be so much fun? The summer sailing season is almost upon us, and preparations for the re-launch of the good ship Odyssey have reached fever pitch. It's a case of all hands under the keel. Yours truly was promoted from deck gorilla to second hull polisher. A temporary position, I gather. 

I learned a lot this weekend about what goes on beneath the waterline. Anti-fouling, it turns out, is not a FIFA initiative to clean up the beautiful game, but a specialist coating to prevent the colonisation of one's underparts by barnacles. Or slime. 

Most importantly, I learned that when you're standing on a plank set across two ladders, it is best NOT to step on the end bit that sticks out beyond the top rung. Fortunately, I completed my less-than-elegant descent to ground level unobserved and uninjured, with nothing more than a bruised ego. I also managed to miss the paint can. 

So here I am back at my desk and what I have in front of me is our latest set of Health and Safety posters for Corus: Safe Working at Height. Ah, the irony. And here is the real lesson. Anyone who is smug about the 'stating-the-bleeding-obvious' level of so many Health and Safety communications, take heed. It is the bleeding obvious that causes all the trouble. 

If you work up close with a crane loading and unloading tonnes of steel every day of your life, you just stop noticing the risk. If you are absorbed in a task (even something as mindless as buffing a yacht hull to a blinding finish) it is all too easy to forget where your feet are. 

The safety campaigns we have put together for hospitals, construction sites, steelworks and offices have to jolt, arrest, startle, joke, remind and alert the people they are aimed at. We're not telling anyone what they don't already know (it's bleeding obvious, right?) - we're just bringing it to mind at the critical moment. 

Or do we deck gorillas have to go on learning by our own mistakes?

Carrie

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