Health and Safety
What do H&S do?
The health and safety of the company is incredibly important and is a heavily organised and plan based process.
During the pre-production phase, it is the h&s teams' job to work with all the company to identify all potential risks on stage. Thing such as falling lighting fixtures or set need to be noted down so that the h&s team can put regulations in place to prevent any harm to anyone. Alongside this, it is the team's job to investigate the building and get all the information on the building that they require. Things such as maps of fire exits and electrical units to ensure all the areas which need to be kept under lock and key as they could pose potential danger to company, or visitors need to be noted down and labelled with the correct signs (fire exit or staff only). During the actual production, the team must enforce the risk assessment and ensure that the company and visitors are kept safe, making sure that all crew and actors follow the guidelines and regulations set, and that should a danger occur then the visiting public are made aware of what to do whether that is evacuate the building or stay in their seats.
Risk assessing and CPPs and any change that are made to them follow the same process. First you identify the hazard and the threat it may pose, then you produce a countermeasure and plan to reduce or remove the risk of danger. You then implement this countermeasure to test if it works, noting down any faults and changes it may need. You study your plan to see if any changes need to be made and what improvements can be added to further reduce the risk. Then finally you implement your changes and further improve on it whenever an idea to advance your countermeasure comes to mind.
Team Delegation
Aside myself, I had two other people in the Health and safety team, Stanley and Piper. While I created the Construction Phase plan template, Stanley made the Risk assessment with some assistance from Piper (who was also the Head of Construction for the show) After the template was created, me, Piper and Stanley worked together to create the completed CPPs for each day required. Stanley had worked with/created risk assessments before, so naturally that job fell to him. Whereas as the Piper was HOC for the show, so she was involved on the risks of the risk assessment and the objectives of each day in the CPP as it was her primary role to choose such.
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As the Health and Safety team we had a lot of tasks to do to ensure everyone was safe. During week one of rehearsals, we studied the set design and read the script, making sure we understood any possible conflictions between actors and the set, if they may come too near to set and what potential harm could come to them, could they fall? Or injure in some way? We too measures to stop such, ensuring the director knew of potential hazards and where his actors should not be. We made sure to highlight all potential hazards in the script and took note so that we could later mention them in our risk assessment. On top of this, we made sure to read all the rehearsal notes so that we were aware of any potential changes that may bring up a new hazard. Some food props were used int this show, so we made sure to collect food allergen sheets so that we knew if any of the actors were allergic to any foods so that we could substitute them for something else if need be. Just before the tech rehearsals began, we created the finished risk assessment which was published to the team for them to read and understand what regulations they had to follow to avoid injury. At the start of the tech rehearsals, we had a health and safety walk around with crew and actors so that they all understood where the hazards were, how to prevent them and the nearest fire exits to leave the building should an incident occur. And finally, when the show was ongoing, the risk assessment was firmly followed and changed where necessary, if at all.
Risk Assessment
A risk assessment is a document created to label all risks and hazards that could be a possible danger on site. Then, the risk assessment will label ways to avoid these dangers as much as possible , being rules for site workers to follow to keep them safe on site.
The Construction Phase plan is a document that contains the arrangements of health and safety on specific days in the work place to ensure that all the staff present are aware of what hazards may be present on the day and how to avoid them. For example, when the constructors are fitting up the set, there could be wood shards and tools everywhere that will be trip hazards, so all staff must wear steel toe capped boots and be aware of their surroundings while in the working areas that are listed on the CPP.
I made a template for the CPP putting in all the base information that was universal for all our CPPs that would be made; putting in information such as who the production company is and who the production manager is.
After making the template, I made the CPP for the coming Sunday get in. This didn’t take long as I copied the template into a new document then filled in the first box describing the schedule for the day.
Impact and Responsibility
The Health and Safety team has a very large impact on the performance as it is their job to ensure all company are safe and well noting down and preventing any dangers that are present in the workplace and notifying the company of any potential dangers and hazards. Without the h&steam, the company may not be aware of some large hazards with high dangers that could cause potentially life changing/threatening injuries with is very obviously unwanted by both victim and company and paints bad reputation on everyone involved.
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Our target audience is everyone inside the active workplace both visiting public and the main company and staff. Your main priority as a Health and Safety worker are ensuring the safety of everyone in the building by reducing all the risks you find to the minimalist level possible to try and dull down the chances of harm falling to someone as much as possible.
Therefore, it is your responsibility to ensure that all company get the correctly detailed CPPs and Risk Assessments and to enforce the guidelines within them as to minimalize risk when working. It is also your responsibility to ensure the public is safe by correctly and obviously labelling fire doors and exits and informing the public of the situation when a danger is present by ensuring they are either evacuated or aware of the situation at hand.