Health & Safety
Guiding you through the Health & Safety maze
At Catalyst we believe in delivering the highest quality services. We are committed to assisting our clients to negotiate through the maze of health and safety legislation and to provide practical, cost-effective solutions to help you to continuously improve.
We are a group of like-minded risk management professionals, with over 30 years’ experience in the health and safety industry. We believe in providing innovative services solutions, using technology wherever possible, to ease the burden on our clients. The following are some of the key services we offer.
Business Review
As an organisation do you know whether your health and safety arrangements are effective in managing the risks you and your clients are exposed to:
- Are you meeting all relevant health and safety related legal requirements?
- Do people carry out their individual and collective H&S responsibilities as you would expect?
- Where are you in relation to other organisations in your sector?
- Would you be able to make a due diligence defence in relation to public liability claims?
- Where do you want to be in terms of compliance – letter of the law or a high standard?
- Have instructions and objectives from senior management been implemented.
Our occupational health and safety business review aims to identify what is going well, what improvements are needed to your arrangements and to provide practical, pragmatic actions to help make lasting change.
Audit / Workplace Risk Assessment
We offer a hybrid approach where we will audit your health and safety arrangements at site level, measuring compliance with all relevant legislation, while also completing a physical assessment of the workplace. This is effective in looking at the level of compliance in relation to one site or a whole portfolio. The outcome will be a report containing a prioritised Action Plan with costings where possible and a documented workplace risk assessment. Effective management information will also be produced to enable you to target resources where they are most needed. This information, reports and records can all be delivered via our online H&S management tool.
CDM
The objective of the Construction Design and Management Regulations 2015 (CDM) is to improve the health and safety of construction related work by ensuring that key individuals are responsible for health and safety during the design, planning and construction phases of developments and the maintenance and use post completion. Specific responsibilities are assigned to clients, designers and contractors. Works can easily go wrong leaving dutyholders exposed. Even if you are unaware of these duties, you may still be responsible. We offer a number of CDM related services, including acting as Principal Designer, reviewing your CDM arrangements and completing site checks to measure whether works are proceeding safely and as planned.
Risk Assessments
Risk assessments are the cornerstone of the UK legislative framework. Organisations are required to protect their employees, and other who may be affected, from risks to their health and safety. We can assist you in meeting this requirement through:
- Training workshops on practical completion of the risk assessments relevant to your business.
- Working with you to identify and assess the risks to your business and then implement and review the relevant control measures.
This can also be extended to include specific risks and assessments required by other legislation, eg work at height, traffic management, manual handling and COSHH.
Accident Investigation
Key outcomes of accident investigation is to learn lessons, identify any improvements and minimise recurrence. It is estimated that 40 million working days are lost per year from accidents. Effective accident investigation will identify the underlying and root causes of accidents and reduce ill-health, lost production, property damage, enforcement action and potentially insurance costs.
We provide a methodical process with a number of key steps, including a site assessment, interview of witnesses, analysis of previous events and document evaluation. All this needs to take place without delay and, where possible, before the accident scene changes. The output will be an action plan with cost effective improvements to secure lasting change.
Expert Witness
We aim to work with our clients to help them to meet their safety related objectives and ensure that they comply with the law. However, despite everything, sometimes things can go wrong, and you may not be at fault. We offer an expert witness service where prosecution or enforcement action is planned or threatened. We will carry out an independent investigation of the circumstances, prepare a detailed report on our findings and, where necessary, give evidence in court. We can also source experts in other fields, including fire safety and asbestos.
ISO 45001
Organisations may wish to progress to IOS 45001 accreditation. This standard sets the framework for a systematic approach to health and safety management. This can be challenging where an organisation has a number of different departments with different processes. We can assist you by reviewing your current arrangements and identifying improvements, aligning your policies to give a consist approach across the organisation and by developing new procedures where they are needed.
Mentoring
Resources for H&S management can often be limited. We can assist companies and managers by helping them plan, budget, implement, monitor and review health and safety priorities and objectives.
Training
Competence is a key element in effective health and safety management. It is essential that people understand their health and safety roles, are able to perform them, and are able to work safely. This should include risk areas such as fire safety, control measures and actions from risk assessments as well as the specific risks associated with your business. We offer:
- A range of NEBOSH and IOSH accredited courses covering all levels of health and safety management.
- A series of workshops so that people can learn in practice how to complete risk assessments and manage key issues such as asbestos, work at height, manual handling and fire safety.
Policy and Safety Management System Development
Part of your arrangements for managing health and safety will be a set of documented processes which detail how the risks associated with your business, and identified through the risk assessment process, can be effectively controlled. We can assist you by:
- Developing a core of documented policies which will be consistent, practical and measurable without becoming a burden on resources.
- Develop individual policies and procedures to assist in the control of specific or unique risks to your business.
Contractor Management
Many health and safety issues can be as a result of contractor’s activities and actions. While each contractor is responsible for their own health and safety, the client still has a duty, as far as is reasonable, to ensure each contractor is competent and capable to complete the work instructed. We can assist by significantly reducing the burden of completing this task through contractor appraisal processes and onboarding using an online contractor management system. In addition we can also audit contractor’s activities to measure whether they are working safely.
