Just a quick question

[john meehan]

sure he has been said on here before, if it looks too close it is. not worth fryin yourself or others, good call.

 

Thanks mate

[Mick Dempsey]

What sort of power line out of curiosity?

[john meehan]

LV mate

[BrendanTreeFeller]

Speaking as someone who does the management and the actual work on site (self-employed ) ....

 

There is No point whatsoever getting yourself injured or killed due to a managers mess-up / under quote mate.

 

Your job is to do the tree work, but the managers job is to get the work, liaise with the customer, give the right quote and job schedule and take care of staff, risk assessments, budgets, TPOs, etc etc. such that you can then go and do the work safely, efficiently and within the timescale and quote agreed with the customer.

 

They should have spotted the power lines at quote stage and factored increased time schedules, budgets, risk assessments etc into the quote so that the job can be done

 

1. Safely

2. Profitably / efficiently / quickly

3. In a timescale agreed with the customer

 

in that order.

 

No one is perfect & everyone makes mistakes, and that they did not spot it at first could be a mistake, BUT what is unacceptable is if they spotted it and did not take measures to mitigate the risk, and / or did not take any measures when informed by you of the risk, and then expect you to put yourself at unnecessary risk to make up for their mess-up.

 

The job is dangerous enough without unnecessary risks like this IMO.

[Paul Barton]

Hi John,

 

Sounds like a tricky situation, but this is something that can only be judged on site. It's not realistic for us as people that haven't seen the site, the risk assessment etc to tell you whether you're right or wrong. Have an open and frank discussion with your boss - if there's been a communication problem then they need the feedback.

[Benny360]

At the end of the day you shouldn't have to do anything your not comfortable with, your well within your rights to back off from any job your not comfortable with. Out of interest is the line insulated or uninsulated?

I had a similar situation a while back with a a guy I was working for, 4 guys on the job and pressure to get it done, real windy day, big multi-stemmed sycamore in between 2 caravans with not much space, wind was borderline more than i was comfortable with. Got up there and set up the rigging blocks but wasnt feeling it and just thought f*** it's not worth it and came down. Boss was pissed thinking I was just being slack so got up there himself, sure enough half an hour later the wind really got going, but it would have been unsafe to leave it at that point so he had to just get on with it free falling big limbs into this ornamental garden destroying a sky dish and shrubs in the process just to get down quick.

Moral of the story, go with your gut and have the confidence in your own experience to know where the limit is and when to say no, things look different from the ground.