Health and Safety?

[no step]

Having spent many enjoyable years maintaining the Tornado under RAF rule, it seems I have been blissfully unaware that it's a fair old way to fall off the top of one. Thankfully my new found BAe colleagues have shown me the light and kicked us off the job (their job, their profits, their shareholders, their problem? My soon to be working weekend!).

Plan to fix problem - constantly move staging (both small incorrect items) to where people are working at altitudes in excess of 5mm. In practice this allows for one person to be on the jet and the rest chasing below 'keystone cop style' with staging, periodically creating small dents here and there to be repaired at a later date (spares dependant) and forgetting the bolt they were tightening half an hour ago. Seems reasonable, making sure you can do the job and you have the equipment before signing the contract would after all, be crazy.

I hope 'they' think of something else for me to worry about soon, because I need MORE. Civilianization, production levels, KPI targets, underspends, overspends, time booking, QA, spares chasing, manpower, crap IT, no heating and everything else is not enough to stop me worrying about the quality of the workmanship on the jet that leaves the hangar...yet.

Anyone feel healthier or safer?

I hope this does not come across as bitter because i remember enjoying my job

[tonkabloke]

I too seem to remember those great days of enoying my job. Days when our management actually cared about what went on and supported us. The days when we were actually doing the job our post and/or rank permitted, instead of doing jobs below and above our positions. When we werent run by civilians who only have cost in mind, and seemingly going through the motions of safety. Supervision when deemed necessary as not to reduce production levels, leading back to cost again. I think i know where you work NO STEP.

Does anyone else?

[Miserable Old Git]

I remember falling off the cockpit sill of an F4,

Luckily there was no one else in the HAS to see me.

Luckily I didn’t hurt myself, because there was no one else in the HAS.

The point is that aircraft can be dangerous and people sue over the smallest things.

MOG

[airborne_artist]

Worth bearing in mind that 80% of the fatal (yes fatal) accidents in the building industry occur when the victim has fallen from a height of less than 10' AGL.

Was told that by the HSE lady who came to examine my house, the scene of a significant accident, when a roofer fell through an incomplete skylight to the concrete 9' below. He spent 12 days in hospital after cracking his pelvis.

[Onan the Clumsy]

Too bad that skylight wasn't a nob length higher then or he'd have been alright

[RileyDove]

I think the critical height is 6 feet and over in terms of fatalities.

[Jobza Guddun]

No step,

I guess you work in what is now the BAES empire in E Anglia where the RAF seems to be rolling over and letting civilian managers tell the blue suiters what to do. I don't envy you one bit, I think the best thing to be said for that place is the hours (usually anyway). Suffice to say, were I to be offered promotion into a job in that place in all probability I would turn it down.

The whole camp is becoming a pants place to be, and when all 4 tonka sqns are crammed into 2 HAS sites, that'll be the last straw. A shame a decent bloke like Baggers has to preside over this crap.

Heard the one about clothing stores going to Honington because BAES want the stores building for their own use?

Jobza

[tonkabloke]

Some of you seem to have missed the point, agreed falls can happen and aircraft are dangerous. i think he was implying that should you be planning to take over the scheduled maintenance of fastjet aircraft facility, is it not unreasonable to get all the equipment/orders/practices in place or at least ready to go? why are we getting boll~cked for not using staging and ordered to stop work, when we havent got the staging? why are we working without terms of reference/orders? maybe thats because we are only 3 months into the project i guess. why do working practices change on a daily basis and by word of mouth depending on who you are talking to?


To what cost do we make a system work?

[Onan the Clumsy]

I think the critical height is 6 feet and over in terms of fatalities.

Shouldn't that be six feet UNDER?

[A2QFI]

Working up ladders

For good reason, there is a 2 day ladder at St Athan. There was a suggestion that ALL pilots would have to go on it as they use ladders as part of their work. Didn't happen but another nonsense was that we had to get some sort of dispensation so that we didn't have to provide disabled access to our simulator cockpit. AND I was told of for using the phrase 'disabled'; it is now, officially, 'Differently Abled"!

[L1A2 discharged]

There has been a change to the working at height regulations. The change was to remove the minimum height above surface level to which they applied.

A hangar near stonehenge has a ceiling mounted fall arrestor system which seemed to work ok. A bit fiddly to step over blades etc if working on the roof of a frame. Sackable offense to not use it.

[no step]

I should point out that I am a firm believer in health and safety, something in the past that the air force on many points has demonstrated blatant disregard for. My real concern is for the current system of 'can do make do' and ever increasing workaround practices.

The job is hard enough without the endless stream of sideline statisticians piling the pressure on and bleating about overspends and under achievment. I really don't care. My concern is the quality of the job at hand and the welfare of those around me. How much more pressure can the people on the shop floor handle before something breaks.

How many people are going to drag that incorrect staging out in the rain to do that egr leak check up top? I know I will be, but I can't speak for all the other folk who like me, have simply had enough.

[charliegolf]

Not Disabled, but Differently Abled

Crippled is probably a real no-no then?









The BMAA's disabled pilots refer to their modified aircraft as those with a 'Cripp Conversion' Their term, they clearly don't appreciate PC bulldust.

CG

[BEagle]

Nor did the disabled bloke at the university I attended in the 1970s. He drove one of those single seat blue 'invalid carriages' that used to be seen in those days. One day I was driving to university in my MG Midget when he shot past in a haze of 2-stroke smoke, his vehicle proudly bearing the words 'SPASMOBILE TURBO' in big letters on the back!

[FJJP]

Aaaah Beags, those were the days when you were allowed to have a sense of humour and take the p*ss.

It's got to the stage now where the disabled can't take the michael out of other disabled because the abled may be offended!

[Blodwyn Pig]

i shouldn't worry about it too much, in the cutting edge aircraft repair facility that i work in we have been saddled with health and safety for the last few years. safety glasses, masks, gloves, safety harnesses, fall arrest systems (or a bit of stageing to land on if no fall arrest available).
you used to be able to use a band saw, but now you have to go on a course, you get a course telling you how to lift empty carboard boxes so you dont hurt your back, you name it, theres a course for it!
after a while you get used to it, and wonder how on earth you managed to stat alive day to day using the old , dangerous ways!

i'm sure if you want to make money on your demob, just become a health and safety 'consultant'!

and then if health and safety wasn't enough, they start introducing lean with all its management speak bull s**t (rolling out out ideas, blue sky thinking, cascading down, think out of the box, aaaa!)

[tonkabloke]

The point is not using staging and we are all happy to enforce health and safety aspects. I re-iterate again how can you be grilled for not using staging when there is insufficient available, and no room to constantly transfer it from one side to another every 10 minutes. then we get told we are overspending manhours on tasks as we are constantly having to make do!! statistics say the more movements carried out the more accidents will happen.

This is just another rant which has surface since bae reared their heads. no step and i can surely tell lots more!!!

[no step]

forgot to mention that the issues only apply on one half of the hangar. The lucky few not yet enslaved in the Royal Aerospace Force are merrily singing and dancing without a care in the world - make the most of it.

Like death DMS comes to us all.

[Chris Kebab]

Pardon me for being a bit dull here but how come a contractor led operation is liable to a HSE inspection and the RAF is not? I was under the impression that H&S rules applied accross the board these days. Or is it just the mood of the HSE man on the day?

[Krystal n chips]

Originally Posted by charliegolf

Crippled is probably a real no-no then?
The BMAA's disabled pilots refer to their modified aircraft as those with a 'Cripp Conversion' Their term, they clearly don't appreciate PC bulldust.
CG

As heard in the Church during the funeral service for a friend of mine a couple of years ago at a certain East Anglian base currently under discussion here. A reference was made to the great work he did converting gliders for these people-----and the term used to describe the conversion?--- as above ----and the biggest cheer ? --from those at the rear who had been the recipients of his work. Had the added benefit of a "oh dear, what else can go wrong" moment as displayed on the face of the Padre at the time !