Lesson 6 - Health and Safety - 1/12/16

Health and Safety

RIDAW - Report all Injuries and Dangerous Occurrences at Work
RIDAW is in place to help management locate any trends or problems areas within a job, which allows them to put in place extra safety nets to stop the injuries occurring.
HASAW - Health and Safety at Work
Passed in 1974, HASAW "places a duty on all employers 'to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work' of all their employees."
Manual Handling
Manual Handling Regulations describe safer ways to pick up and carry heavy equipment. They also state that manual handling should be avoided unless it is absolutely necessary.
WAHR - Work at Height Regulations
Fun Fact! The height at which WAHR come in is the height at which there is the potential to cause harm.
Above a certain height, a platform required toe boards, guard rail and a safety harness for the worker.
LEV Systems - Local Exhaust Ventilation Systems
LEV systems serve to remove the risk of the inhalation of airborne contaminants.
COSHH - Control of Hazardous to Health
This is the control of all substances hazardous to health that a worker may come across. It dictates that there should be a secure storage facility that all dangerous substances are kept in. Each substance should have a written safety data sheet that contains all of the information about the substance. This is to be handed on to medical professionals should the substance cause harm.
Risk Assessments 
To minimize risk, any feature of a performance or task during a production can be risk assessed. A risk assessment lists all possible risks and puts forward  protocol to reduce the chance of accident.

Fire Arms
The third year production of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' involved the use of a single firearm that was waved around and fired once.
When using firearms within a production only the exact number of rounds needed for one particular show should be loaded into the firearm, For example, in the third year production a single shot was fired so only one round was loaded into the revolver. If there are more than one showings per night then the gun should be prepped individually for each show.
At the end of each night all unused and expended cartridges need to be accounted for.
When travelling with

The Mountain Top
The use of fire, including smoking, is completely prohibited within Welsh theatre. This means that other more inventive ways are needed to depict fire and smoking. In 'The Mountain Top,' the scenes that depicted MLK smoking cigarettes, the cigarettes were replaced with realistic looking vapes. One of the duties of the ASM might have been to come up with the alternatives.
Another duty of the SM might have been to come up with the spray mixture that was used to give the impression of glistening to make it appear as if MLK had just come inside from a storm. Water doesn't hold as well or glisten that much so an alternative would produced.

Study Task - Risk Assessment 
Workshop

The above is a Risk Assessment I have filled out for a workshop in scenic construction.

References

McCall, S. (2014) Top 10 health & safety risks in construction. Available at: http://www.alcumusgroup.com/top-10-health-safety-risks-in-construction/ (Accessed: 8 December 2016).

Risk management: Health and safety in the workplace (2016) Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/ (Accessed: 8 December 2016).