Many will be aware that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are in the process of revising HSE guidance document ‘Avoiding Danger from Underground Services (HSG47)’. Although intended for publication earlier this year, it has been delayed due to resource issues and no planned update time has been given (although it is likely to be this year).
Having spoken with the inspector responsible for this project, having been asked to review and comment on a draft and being familiar with other changes to legislation, I felt it timely to provide a summary of the potential changes.
When looking at an HSG document and anticipating changes, to second guess what they are likely to contain, it is important to understand that an HSG is not a legal document. Its contents illustrate good practice and are a snapshot in time, rather than a definitive guide as to how to do the work. Unlike an ACoP, which outlines the minimal legal standards, an HSG document is used as a summary and may be used to judge if a company has done sufficient to comply broadly with the scope of existing regulations.
The greatest change to HSG47 that we know about is the removal of one of the four ‘steps’ in the safe system of work. ‘Maps and plans’ is likely to disappear as a discrete stage and instead be incorporated into the ‘planning’ section. This makes sense, as it is further reinforces the need to have access to maps and plans as part of the pre construction safety process.
Other changes are updated summaries of more recent technologies such as vacuum excavation, ground penetrating radar and the use of 3rd party mapping systems. Essentially, HSG47 will still be a snapshot of the best available techniques and technologies, against which an organisation (and an inspector) will be able to decide if everything is being done, so far as reasonably practicable, to protect employees and others.
When looking at other possible changes to HSG47, we should look at changes to the wider legislative picture since the current version was published in 2000. The greatest changes to health and safety since then, have been imposed through the implementation of CDM2007. HSG47 is based around the 1994 version of CDM and therefore does not reflect the current CDM ACoP and must be therefore be updated to include it.
The new version of HSG47 is likely to reinforce the duty of the Client to ensure all the appointees are competent in line with CDM, a process seen as overly bureaucratic and largely ineffective. To this end, HSG47 is likely to stress the need for training of employees to risk assess their work, recognising it is highly dynamic, rather than just training them how to operate a CAT and Genny.
Additionally, the role of the CDM Coordinator as outlined in CDM2007 and the importance of construction phase plans (neither of these existed in 2000) are likely to be outlined in the new version of HSG47.
To further complicate matters, the CDM2007 ACoP is currently being revised as the UK is not in full compliance with the EU Directive 92/57/EEC – ‘temporary or mobile construction sites’. In the next revision there is likely to be an extension of the definition of Client to include domestic individuals under the scope of some CDM projects, which may mean many more construction sites fall under scope of notifiability of some sort.
As an interesting aside, a document (PAS128) is currently being developed by British Standards – sponsored by the ICE, to standardise underground service surveys. Clients, designers, CDM Coordinators and contractors will all be able to specify the type of survey required, to improve consistency. It will be interesting to see how the construction industry picks this standard up and how Clients adopt it.
The delays in HSG47 and the forthcoming changes to CDM cannot be used to claim a lack of knowledge or for a delay in implementing a safe system of work. The legal standard that the employer is responsible for assessing is that which is ‘reasonably foreseeable’ and this includes both industry and expert knowledge. Despite the delays in publication there is still enough information and guidance out there for anyone with responsibilities for underground services, to be judged against this threshold.
The changes to CDM2007 (expected in 2014) are likely to have far more effect on geotechnical projects than HSG47, but that’s another article, when we know more about what is likely to be included. So I’ll hopefully be back again next year, with more updates on CDM and by then we should know the contents of HSG47 (fingers crossed).