Common HRB Safety Case Mistakes

A few common safety case mistakes that we've seen at RiskFlag when supporting HRB clients develop their safety cases in the RiskFlag platform:

1. A lack of understand of their HRB risks, before starting their safety case.
2. No Safety Management System (SMS) in place - this is not your Health and Safety Management System!

But what are the key aspects that need to be argued (or demonstrated) in a safety case? These can be summarised:

1. An understanding of your risk.
2. An understanding of your regulation.
3. And an understanding of why you are 'confident' that your safety cases demonstrate that all reasonable steps have been taken to make the HRB safe to live in.

Now focusing on 'confidence' with an example:

"Why are you confident that the contractors are competent to conduct the work?"

Confidence is gained by your processes. For example:

1. You define required contractor competencies within your SMS.
2. You check contractor competencies, asking for certificates of qualification, for example.
3. You continually monitor and assess that the required level of competence, as well as review Key Performance Indicators.

These processes should be managed in your safety case and summarised in your safety case report, when called forward by the Building Safety Regulator.

PAS 8673 is an interesting read regarding competence.

If you have any thoughts or questions on safety cases then please email us at info@riskflag.com