John Southwell Reports From IOSH 2011 Excel London

Three members of the NW Co-ord attended the two day IOSH at the ExCel exhibition centre in London. Derek Maylor John Southwell & John Marsh all attended & found the The IOSH 2011 conference and exhibition to be very informative & an excellent time do some networking!

It was held at ExCeL, in London on Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 March with more than 100 exhibitors taking to the floor of the hall.

The annual IOSH conference is the largest and most comprehensive health and safety conference in the UK.

Each year it features a prestigious array of leading speakers, up-to-the-minute information and best practice case studies - all aimed at helping health and safety professionals meet their future challenges - and this year was no different. There was the IOSH main stand, Spotlight presentation theatre's one & two & the IOSH Networks theatre.

Day One

Alison Wellens head of HSE slips ,trip & falls team, gave a presentation on the HSE update on Work at Height.
Two members of the co-ord found it necessary ( no names!) to attend the IOSH Continual Personal Development (CPD) refresher held at IOSH's main stand, this was presented by Mandip Pabial-Parmar & although only lasting some fifteen minuets it was a very informative session.

In the afternoon John Marsh attended the Carbon & environmental management presentation again on the main ISOH stand, this was given by Paul Hyde & Paul Reeve, while Derek & myself attended the Powered access presentation in theatre two.

For those who know me you will know that powered access is close to my heart as I have asked the CWU ( via CWU conference) to enter into discussions with the company about providing some sort of powered access for accessing DP's.

The pole belt & ladder system has served us well over the years but it would be a shame not to use this new technology now it is available. After a couple of falls from height in my area I look forward to this years CWU conference for an update on progress.

Giles Councell gave a short presentation about the International Powered Access Federation (IPAF) Training is also given by IPAF & new platforms will have a smart card that will only allow the operator to take the platform that he/she is trained to use, show hours of use etc,etc. Successful trainees are awarded the PAL Card (Powered Access Licence)as proof of training, see pic.

DAY 2

DSE what works what doesn't? This was a presentation given by Sheila Robin, again an excellent presentation with slides giving good & bad examples of workstation set ups. I wonder if I could invite Sheila into my local call centre in Blackburn?

There was also a presentation about ladder safety by Martin Brooke, there are two million ladders in use in the UK ! Some excellent advice for working on a ladder is to keep your belt buckle as a centre for working on the ladder, & do not let it move away from either side of the ladder, by over-reaching for example, if you don't have one on imagine that you do!

For lunch the ExCel exhibition centre has an excellent food hall on the entry level (there are three levels altogether) with many different types of foods to choose from.

While having a look around the exhibition  hall we bumped into Paul Hancock who is the Safety Risk Manager for Openreach. We had a good chat with Paul about safety & specifically contractor safety. It was time to leave the conference & get the tube back to Euston station for the train back up to the North West, overall an excellent two days.

With thanks to: www.shponline.co.uk http://www.iosh.co.uk/ http://www.ipaf.org/

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