Health & Safety Expert

I started in health and safety as a temporary measure over twenty years ago and never quite managed to escape.

The most enjoyable part of my job is the ability to make a real contribution towards improving peoples working lives and ensuring they go home in the same condition or better than they arrive.

The work can often be very technical and require a high level of skill to get things done in a positive and meaningful way.

In a previous job we needed to identify the source of a leak in one of those huge cylindrical gas containers you see in and around major cities. For anyone that doesn’t know, these containers are essentially upside-down metal cups that sit in a submerged pool of water as deep as the container is tall. Getting inside involves pumping all the gas out, raising it again under air pressure then passing through via an airlock.

When you get lowered to the small dingy in the pool, if you don’t suffer from claustrophobia then there is the fear of heights and the stink from the enclosed space to contend with, and as most of these were constructed during the Victorian era it is not unknown for bodies to be found in them, demonstrating the kind of hazard they can be if not handled professionally!

On this particular job a diver investigating the leak resurfaced to say that he thought he’d found a ww11 bomb. At first we thought it was a wind up to scare us but later he proved correct. The bomb had hit the container but failed to explode, sinking into the mud and sitting there for over sixty years till we found it.

I immediately closed down the job and evacuated the area for the bomb-squad. Their investigation discovered that because it was submerged in water traditional steam-defusing methods could not be used. Instead they had to lift the bomb out of the lake in a bosun’s chair and then defuse it outside the gasholder!

The story was subsequently made in to a program and was shown on TV.

I chose to come and work with the Rentokil team because they seemed like the most interesting group of people with a positive attitude to both their work and towards the H&S agenda.

The EU is dominating the H&S agenda in the future and I expect that we will see more goal seeking in legislation; if the so called ‘corporate killing legislation’ ever takes off then we are likely to see a significant change in attitudes.

H&S is and will increasingly become a key differentiator between our competitors and ourselves; more and more the Government is purchasing not only on price but on ability and this will always give an advantage to those firms who balance H&S with business needs.