valderama

Hi Everyone, Recently one of our grounds maintenance teams managed to cut another operatives finger with 261 whilst snedding and stacking some small hedging material. Ultimately the operatives were working outside of agreed SSOW by being so close to one another. There's investigation ongoing with any resulting actions likely to effect our arbs teams also. Our SSOW align to industry best practice, in that operatives are briefed to maintain a minimum of 5m (I accept in the real world this can be challenging) and we generally note this on our point of work risk assessment. We also create a physical barrier between the working area and members of the public (highways contract). A question will be asked by our director as to why we don't place a physical barrier in between the operative cutting material on the ground and the operative dragging brash to the chipper. My question is, does anyone else have a requirement to do this in their industry? I personally can't see how this can work on a low speed highway site with limited space, I can only see the barriers getting in the way and the ops removing them once the supervisor leaves site. Are the safety devices out there than can help with this, I'm aware there are sensors on rail and high speed highways designed to detect plant or vehicle incursion but I'm not aware of anything that prevents human incursion into a safety zone. I feel that our SSOW are robust and fairly standard across the industry and that in case its operative behaviour at fault for not following procedure but for the purpose of the investigation I need to look for alternatives. Any help or suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks