Health and Safety Consultancy / Independent Health and Safety Inspections in Gloucestershire
Independent Health and Safety Inspections in Gloucestershire
Safety Hands Plus has competent qualified and independent health and safety insepctors on hand to support your internal, external, accreditation, or pre-accreditation audits or inspections.
Health and Safety Inspections
Safety inspections are a less formal but structured process of checking for hazards, failings, or defects in specific items or tasks or the potential for them, less formal than an audit for instance. Safety inspections are usually narrow in scope and check that the inspected item or tasks are meeting a defined and minimum standard or acceptable limit. Examples of inspections would be:
- Periodic electric inspections
- Scaffold inspections
- Equipment inspections
- Plant inspections
- Vehicle inspections
- Infrastructure inspections, fire alarm, emergency lighting, sprinklers, cranes, passenger lifts etc.
Safety inspections are usually documented by a safety specialist or an appointed safety representative. There are many types of safety inspections. Most safety inspections follow a formal checking process, procedure, or checklist, this ensures no matter which inspector undertakes the check, the inspection will be thorough, consistent, and guide the inspector to pinpoint specific safety issues.
Formal inspections can be in any format and will need to test things to the best standards for your organisation or prescribed industry standards. Below are some common types of inspection:
- Leadership visits
- Safety tours
- Specialist inspections
- Safety representative inspections
- Post near miss inspections
- Enforcement authority visit
- Defect investigation
- Hazard inspection
- New item, system, or task pre-inspection
Good Inspection Practice
Your safety specialists or representatives should schedule and establish the minimum mandatory requirement for each inspection type and ensure that they are planned. Safety Hands Plus can support you or your own team with identifying this requirement and producing methods or systems for you to follow.
All safety inspections should be planned in advance and scheduled as well as communicating this within the company to all relevant parties. All inspections need to be fully coordinated and the number of inspectors required to meet the minimum standard agreed. If possible, inspect together with the operator to establish a trusting relationship. If required, use, and consult specialists on more technical issues. If inspections are complex, it is best to break them down into bitesize tasks to ensure the inspection is practical, efficient, thorough, and is not rushed.
Still unsure about Inspection?
Safety Hands Plus would be more than happy to advise you on choosing the correct inspection system to meet your organisation’s requirements. We are experts in all manner of safety inspections ensuring you get the benefit of our experience, knowledge, and best practices.