ECN Forum Forums Safety Discussion and News Occupational Safety Discussion U.K. "Risk assessment" - Over the top?

A neighbor had EDF out a couple of days ago to investigate frequent flickering and brown-outs, and I ended up chatting with the engineer about the recent problem described in this thread, among other things.

As to be expected, the first thing he did to test was remove the meter terminal cover at my neighbor's house and monitor the voltage while asking for some loads to be turned on.

But before he did that, he filled out a load of forms which turned out to be the now-ubiquitous risk assessment. Apparently he is now required to fill in these darned forms for each and every little task, no matter how simple.

I'm all for working safely, but to my mind this is getting ridiculous. How many times a week must he remove the terminal cover from a domestic meter and check the voltage? Dozens. If he isn't aware of the dangers by now, he's never going to be.

So what is the point of requiring a risk assessment report for every single time he has to do something this simple?

No wonder people complain about this country being strangled by red-tape and bureaucracy.

It saves the investigators after the accident from having to fill out the papers. They just pick them out of the dead guys hands.

Crikey Paul,
That seems rather counter-productive, If I had to fill out forms everytime I opened a meter up, I'd never get anything done (or even less, as one of my co-workers would say)
Having said that, we do have a simple test form to fill out that state that the metering had not been tampered with, the polarity was correct and that the meter was re-sealed correctly.
This is often filled in on the Faults truck laptop and is filed in the PoCo system under that places Network Connection Number.
It's purely for legal reasons.

That procedure strikes me as distinctly risk increasing. If the 'risk assessment' forms are mindlessly filled out the same way every time, then they do nothing to increase safety, and probably distract from noticing real dangers.

On the other hand, if they fill the role of a checklist, reminding the technician to check for easily forgotten dangers, then they probably increase safety. If this guy removes a terminal cover dozens of times a week, then he is probably pretty complacent about it. Being reminded to check for things like loose screws or proper meter operation is probably useful.

-Jon