Three free toolbox talks — full scripts

Read this out

Quick one this morning, and it's the one that catches experienced people out.

Every year in this country people end up in hospital falling off a ladder, and when you look at what happened it's almost never somebody who didn't know what a ladder was. It's somebody who knew exactly what they were doing and took one shortcut, once.

Here's the thing about a ladder. It's access equipment for short, light work. That's it. If the job's going to take more than about half an hour, or you need both hands on it, or you're carrying anything with real weight — the ladder is the wrong answer and we get a tower or a platform. Nobody's going to give you grief for asking for one.

Three things put people on the floor.

First, the ladder itself. A split stile, worn feet, a rung that flexes when you stand on it. It happens slowly and you stop seeing it. So look at it before you climb it — feet, rungs, stiles, and on a stepladder the locking bar. Anything wrong and it comes out of service and gets reported. Don't tape it up. Don't just avoid that rung.

Second, the set-up. One in four. For every four up, one out from the wall — about seventy-five degrees, and that's the angle where it stops sliding out at the bottom. Firm level ground. Tied at the top if you can, footed if you can't. And if you're stepping off it onto something, it goes a good metre above the landing so there's something to hold on to while you do.

Third, and this is the big one — overreaching. You're up there, the fixing's about a foot past your fingertips, and moving the ladder means down, shift, back up. Thirty seconds. Every one of us has done it. So here's the rule: belt buckle stays inside the stiles. If you have to lean past that, you come down and move it. And you don't stand on the top three rungs of a leaning ladder, or the top two steps of a stepladder — there's nothing to hold on to up there and that's the whole point.

Three points of contact going up and down. Face the ladder. Tools go in a belt or get hoisted up — not tucked under your arm.

Last thing. Wind. If it's moving the ladder while you're setting it up, it'll move it a lot more with you on it.

Read this out

Manual handling is one of the biggest single causes of injury reported at work in this country. Not falls, not machinery. Lifting.

And the thing about a back is it doesn't heal like a cut on your hand. There are people on sites right now working through one, and there are people who've left the trade because of one. It doesn't announce itself either — it's usually not the heavy lift that does it, it's the four hundredth ordinary one done slightly wrong.

So before you pick anything up, four questions. They take about five seconds.

How heavy is it? Not a guess from looking at it — tip the corner and feel it first.

Where am I taking it? Look at the route now, not halfway through when your arms are full. Doorways, steps, trailing leads, that bit of sheeting on the deck.

Can I actually get hold of it? A light load with nowhere to grip is worse than a heavy one with handles.

Does this need to be in my hands at all? If there's a trolley, a sack truck, a hoist, or a second pair of hands — use it. That's what it's for. Nobody's keeping score.

The lift itself: feet apart, one slightly forward. Bend the knees, not the back. Get the load in tight against your body — the further out you hold it, the more it weighs as far as your spine's concerned. Head up, and lift smooth. No jerking it to get it moving.

Then the one that does most of the damage. Do not twist at the waist with a load in your hands. Move your feet. Every single time. That's the one I want you to remember if you forget the rest of this.

Team lift — one person calls it. Agree who that is before anybody bends down, and agree the words. Ready, lift. Not three people all going on a different beat.

And gloves and boots. Most of the manual handling injuries that aren't backs are fingers and toes.

Read this out

This one's different from most talks we do, because nothing that goes wrong today will hurt today. That's exactly why it gets ignored.

When you cut brick, block, stone, concrete, kerbs, paving — anything with sand or stone in it — you release silica. The part that matters isn't the cloud you can see. It's the part you can't: fine enough to get past everything your nose and throat do to filter air, small enough to reach the very bottom of your lungs, and then it stays there. Your body can't shift it. It scars around it instead.

That's silicosis. There's no cure for it, no operation, no coming back from it. The same dust causes COPD and lung cancer. HSE put it in the hundreds of construction workers a year in this country — and every single one of those was preventable, which is the bit that should annoy you.

Worth knowing: the visible cloud isn't the dangerous part. The dangerous part is what's still hanging in the air ten minutes after the cloud looks like it's cleared.

So, in order.

First — don't cut. Sounds glib, it isn't. A lot of the cutting that happens on a site happens because the wrong sizes got ordered. Order cut-to-size, use a block splitter, get the setting out planned properly. A cut you never make can't hurt anybody.

Second — if you have to cut, control it at the tool. Water suppression with proper flow, not a squirt from a bottle, or on-tool extraction with an M-class unit. Dry cutting in the open air isn't acceptable on this job. Not for one block. Not for thirty seconds.

Third — RPE on top of that, never instead of it. FFP3 minimum, and it only does anything if it seals. If you've got stubble it doesn't seal — it's leaking round the edge and you're just breathing site air through a bit of expensive paper. And you need to be face-fit tested for the mask you're actually wearing, not a similar one.

Think about who's downwind while you're at it. Dust doesn't know where your work area ends. Screen it, or cut somewhere nobody else is standing.

Clean up with the M-class vacuum. Not a brush — sweeping picks up everything that had finally settled and puts it straight back in the air where you'll breathe it. And never, ever an airline.

Last thing, and I mean this one. Change and wash before you go home. Silica on your overalls ends up in your car, on your settee, and around your kids. Don't take this home with you.