Elfs and safety and tings

[troll]

Have we arrived, at the point at which our beloved industry has finally caught up with others on Health and Safety? Are we consistently mobilised armed with yet another generic Risk Assessment? Or no Assessment at all? Are Risk Assessments comprehensive and be honest-do you read them? Am genuinely interested to see if we have finally evolved as a workforce.....not a name and shame thread so please-behave but equally, let`s have some honesty on this......:-)

[P Prentice]

the halcyon days of laissez faire site health and safety have been all but whipped away by the swell of ugly back covering jobsworths but then the halcyon days of laissez faire archaeology has been replaced by the swell of ugly money grabbing jobsworths. what are the risks .. really

[BAJR]

Ignore him, he just says stuff Never a good word to say for anything. but then does not like it if you ask him to back anything up...

So...

In answer. I think it is true.. HOWEVER... sole working... field surveys... the odd job out in teh styx. would love to know how many of these go through anything other than the motions.!

[P Prentice]

forsooth i am verily chided
i definitely remember saying something positive a couple of years ago

[Dinosaur]

The archaeology of anything deeper than 1.4m/1.0m/0.5m/in the case of one client, 0.3m (!) seems to have gone back beyond the dark ages anyway, the context of many of those 'placed/special/whatever deposits is usually actually 'fished out of machine bucket' if you check the site paperwork, we've got several of those off one current job :face-crying:

- it's certainly the natural habitat of Roman altars etc anyway

[troll]

Am comprehensively stirred by the rejection of the enquiry in an almost out of hand fashion. Interesting in itself but not the invigourating dialogue I had envisaged......

[Dinosaur]

The trick is to use tall people in those working shots excavating that big ditch section - the opposite of what Wheeler used to do where he was trying to make things look more impressive [see the worried looking small guy standing in the bottom of the ditch at Stanwick reproduced in Haselgrove 2016 Fig. 5.7 - the ditch actually wasn't that deep]. On modern H&S grounds we'd probably include a ladder? }

[Dinosaur]

the halcyon days of laissez faire site health and safety have been all but whipped away by the swell of ugly back covering jobsworths but then the halcyon days of laissez faire archaeology has been replaced by the swell of ugly money grabbing jobsworths. what are the risks .. really

halcyon: 'Bird said by the ancients to breed in floating nest on sea at winter solstice', also an Australian kingfisher, and '14 days about winter solstice' - oh, yes, and 'happy, prosperous' [OED] ....loads of scope to work that one into a report then, have added it to my list :face-approve:

[Marc Berger]

hello troll welcome back to holding on by its finger nails bajrbaiting. home of Slow motion archaeological debate. What insurance are you writing your risk assessments for, public or employee or are you offering some guarantee for the client for damages to their land?

[Sith]

From my elevated point of view, the 'problem' seems to lie mainly with people who make a meal out of over-egged generic risk assessments rather than sitting down and considering what it is they're actually going to do on site. It's not rocket science: on even the largest most complex project, you're only digging holes so it's not hard to find established ways to do that without putting your employees at risk, and on many larger projects the construction contractor has usually done all the heavy lifting already.

I for one don't miss the 'halcyon days' of it being acceptable to work in deep unsupported holes, or to chance it on a four-stage scaffold tower constructed by people who'd learned how to do it fourth hand and were not all that fused about it being vertical or stable. In fact I never cease to be amazed that only one archaeologist has bought it on site despite the lax standards of blessed memory.