Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/883776
NETWORK / 17 / OCTOBER 2017 in terms of both a preventative control, and what I would call a corrective control. These are 'before and aer' event controls; some- times you have to accept there is a little bit of residual risk, so you ensure you manage the aer-event too. The next element is ensuring we have high quality standards, that are clear and unambiguous. We have a large workforce and we have to make sure standards are consistently applied. A lot of training, supervision and auditing is required. Communications and engagement are also vital. Communications have to be thought-provoking and impactful. It is all about keeping safety at the forefront of your mind. One of the biggest challenges is tack- ling complacency. Even though people feel safe because we are a safe organisation, it is important that people maintain their focus on it. This is where effective engagement mechanisms come into play and communi- cations become genuinely bi-directional or two-way. Q: What is the right health and safety mindset? PV: It is doing the right thing – not because you have to, but because you want to. The mindset has come on a long way in 20 years, in terms of following the correct procedures. If you are doing something be- cause you want to do it, good habits become ingrained and habitual. You know it will be consistent. Q: Your health and safety culture at UK Power Networks won a Utility Week award earlier in the year. What makes it so good? PV: Everyone has been through our lat- est health and safety training, Stay Safe, including the chief executive. It went from the bottom to the top of the company. We're interested in what makes people tick, and how they behave. It is all about behaviours, and your conscious and subconscious mind. We introduced five 'currencies', or five factors you should think about. One of these is an 'alpha state' – this is a well- known phenomenon that all human beings experience, where you dri away, or your mind wanders, for 10 minutes every hour on average. There's nothing you can do about it. The issue in terms of safety is that when you are in the alpha state you do not assess risk and you do not notice anything above your head and below your knees. You might leave a toolbox in the middle of the room. When you are in the alpha state, you might not see it. You also need to recognise bad habits and how these can compromise safety. Com- munication should be open and honest: you must feel able to speak up if something is not right. Q: What other factors are important? PV: We have something called 'time versus risk'. We are hard-wired to save time. Over time, doing a task repetitively, you eventu- ally tend to cut corners, whether you realise it or not. You might think you are perform- ing a task better because you are doing it quickly. In fact, you could be exposing yourself to risk. You can become immune to a risk if you are very used to dealing with it, such as the risk of working with electricity. The final factor is our own 'personal risk perception'. We can kid ourselves that ac- cidents only happen to someone else. Some- times it can be good to let someone else provide a fresh pair of eyes on a scenario and highlight a risk you've not noticed. Q: Is arc flash a problem for UK Power Networks? PV: We have very strict rules around how we operate switchgear equipment and when working on live cables and overhead lines. Flashover should never occur, ever. Full stop. If you are trained, carry out operations according to your training, use insulated tools and use your PPE appropriately, then you should be safe. There are so many lay- ers of safety built in that arc flash is not a factor. Q: What is your biggest measure of the effectiveness of health and safety? PV: We use lost-time injuries. That is our primary measure of measuring performance of health and safety. In 2011, we had 35 in- juries in a workforce of 6,000. In the year to date, we've had two. So we have gone from 35 to two in six years. We also went 364 days without a contractor lost-time injury, which is a record I am proud of. We are the best performing DNO in terms of lost-time injury per 100 employees, and we have been number one for four years. Q: What challenges are on the horizon for health and safety? PV: It's too early to say what impact Brexit will have. It could potentially impact on control of asbestos. Q: What about the impact of new technologies? PV: We are trialling virtual reality. It is early days but the initial feedback is good. The great thing about it is that you don't have to use a classroom to train in health and safety – and you can put staff in a 'hazardous' environment that isn't real. There is some real mileage in that. Cyberhawk wins health and safety award Drone technology firm Cyberhawk Innova- tions scooped the Best Safety Improvement Award at September's Energy Innovation Centre Awards. Cyberhawk's technology is used to help utilities, networks and others to remotely inspect power lines and other assets. It works with Scottish and Southern Energy, Scottish Power and Northern Pow- ergrid, among others. "The majority of TNOs and DNOs are using drone technology now," says Cyberhawk Innovations commercial director Phil Buchan. "One of the main benefits is safety, reduc- ing the need for people to work at height; and reducing the need for manned aircraft such as helicopters to be used to inspect overhead high voltage lines." Buchan adds: "Regrettably, there has been a number of incidents in other Euro- pean countries in which manned aircraft have come down, while doing work near high voltage lines." Drones are now taking over from some traditional inspection techniques. The drone can capture superior imagery to a manned climbing inspection, for example. It can also capture a better close-up than a helicopter patrol typically can. "The three key reasons for doing inspection via drone are safety, reducing cost, and also the cost of obtaining 'bad data'," says Buchan. "With a drone we are capturing the complete image of a tower, so we have records and evidence there. "That allows people to make good deci- sions about asset management, and what should be repaired or replaced."