More than 70 paramedics from the Hazardous Ares Response Teams (HART) at West Midlands Ambulance Service have been recertified for operating in confined spaces following several weeks of training and assessment.

The HART teams approached Arco looking for a facility to use, with Arco welcoming them to the Safety Training Centre in Staffordshire and providing instructors from Arco Professional Safety Services to support the training days as well.

Feedback about the centre’s facilities and the expertise and knowledge of Arco’s instructors, who played a supportive role, was very positive.

Phil Piggott, HART Team Leader at West Midlands Ambulance Service, said: “We’d like to thank Arco for their support in getting our HART paramedics re-certified for operating in high-risk confined spaces.

“The facilities at the safety training centre were excellent and provided the perfect setting over the past several weeks to undertake this vitally important training. The expert advice and knowledge of Arco’s instructors was also really helpful.

“We look forward to returning in the near future to complete recertification for working at height.”

In addition to re-certifying the paramedics, the training offered a valuable learning opportunity for Arco’s instructors, as they were able to observe how the HART teams simulate and manage trauma events.

Steve Dawson, Training Manager at Arco Professional Safety Services, said: “The continued professional development our instructors gained from seeing the HART teams work has been invaluable and we hope to do more of this within safety services.

“I’d like to thank our instructors, Rob Messenger, Nat Smart, Glynn Bibby and Rich Dinn, for conducting the training and helping build these working relationships and connections with West Midlands Ambulance Service.

“We’d like to extend our thanks to the HART teams for trusting us to support them and we hope to continue assisting them with their future training requirements.”

Arco, the UK’s leading safety company, has continued its partnership with the Midlands Cave Rescue Organisation (MCRO) to support its life-saving work.

Members of the MRCO undertake regular rescue training to maintain their skill levels.

As an industry leader in safety training and services, Arco has again provided the MRCO with support by allowing the organisation to use its state-of-the-art training facilities at no cost.

Arco Professional Safety Services team members, who are also MCRO volunteers, delivered the training and provided expert advice and guidance to the other MCRO members in attendance.

Last month, 22 members of the MRCO attended Arco’s Eccleshall Safety Training Centre, in Stafford, to take part in emergency first aid refresher training, including guidance on the use of new equipment and a rescue training exercise.

In addition, Arco has also sponsored the MCRO by providing them with branded team polo shirts for when they are on business.

Jamie Sadler, Commercial Director at Arco Professional Safety Services, said: “As a responsible choice of safety partner, Arco is committed to supporting the communities we call home, including providing support to life-saving groups, like the MCRO.

“Our safety experts are some of the leading professionals in their field and many of them dedicate their spare time outside of the business volunteering with search and rescue organisations.

“Supporting the MCRO with a venue and training facilities as well as the benefit of our instructors’ time, knowledge and expertise is a small way that Arco can give back and to ensure that we keep people safe.”

Mike Clayton, Chairman of the Midlands Cave Rescue Organisation and Equipment Manager at Arco Professional Safety Services, said: “The MCRO is regularly called upon to assist lost and injured people in caves all over the West Midlands, Shropshire and beyond.

“Even though we are a voluntary organisation, it is vitally important that we keep up-to-date with skills development to ensure we can respond to any emergency.

“The support, sponsorship and co-operation we get from Arco ensures that we can be as effective as possible and ready for when the next call comes.”

TRAINING FOR CONFINED SPACE WORKING – ARE YOU FULLY COMPLIANT? 

Brian Grunes, Arco Professional Safety Services Confined Space training expert offers guidance on the risks of confined space working and the upcoming changes to the City & Guilds training accreditation

Q. What kind of working situation could pose a confined space risk?

The existence of confined spaces in some workplaces can be reasonably easy to identify and understand. Tanks, vessels, sewers among others are known to be confined spaces to people working in those environments; however, the existence of confined spaces in commercial or non–industrial premises are less well known. Service ducts, lofts and void spaces, plant rooms or poorly ventilated rooms can be confined spaces too and often found in commercial buildings, hospitals, universities and residential dwellings. Some confined spaces will also develop during construction, or when work activities such as welding or cleaning is being carried out. These spaces are just as hazardous and demonstrate that systems of safe working must be in place in every environment.

Q. What are the dangers of working in confined spaces?

A significant number of people are killed or seriously injured working in confined spaces in the UK each year. Specified risks include: serious injury due to fire or explosion; loss of consciousness arising from increased body temperature; loss of consciousness or asphyxiation arising from gas, fume, vapour, or lack of oxygen; drowning from an increase in the level of a liquid and asphyxiation arising from a free-flowing solid or being unable to reach a respirable environment. These risks occur across a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, utilities, maritime, construction, offshore and agriculture. Those at risk include workers in the confined space itself and those who may have to try to rescue them when things go wrong. Despite legislation and health and safety measures, confined space working poses a very high risk and it’s important to ensure that the right people have the correct skills and capabilities for the roles they undertake. Training is just one part of ensuring the safety of people working in confined spaces.

Q. What should you consider when preparing to undertake confined space working?

Once you have identified that work will be undertaken in a confined space it is important that the right controls are put in place. The Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) L1010 Safe Working in Confined Spaces provides details on the relevant provisions that must be considered. This includes an initial assessment as to whether the work required could be completed without the need to enter the confined space. If that is not possible, then taking the necessary precautions for safe working in a confined space, which will include training, supervision, ensuring safe access and egress, testing and monitoring the atmosphere before and during the procedure, having a reliable communications system in place and suitable equipment for the job. In the event of an accident you would need to show you have followed the code or complied with the law in some other way otherwise a court will find you at fault.

Q. What kind of training is needed for confined space working and who needs it?

Confined space training is essential for those managing or supervising confined space teams as well as those working in confined spaces and for rescue and recovery teams. Confined space training options range from Confined Space Awareness training, through Low, Medium and High-Risk courses, plus Rescue Management and training covering the selection and maintenance of equipment involved in safe confined space working, such as gas monitors, breathing apparatus and personal protective equipment. If the risks are assessed to be too high or the job too complex for in-house teams, you should consider outsourcing jobs to confined space services experts. The confined space courses offered by Arco Safety Services are mapped against a range of National Occupational Standards (NOS) used by a range of Awarding Organisations (AOs) to produce assessment criteria for the level of qualification required. The main AO that we use for confined space is City & Guilds, who offer a suite of associated qualifications.

Q. There’s been some updates to the City & Guilds accreditations – could you explain what these are?

Following the changes made in 2020 to the National Occupational Standards (NOS) for Confined Spaces, City & Guilds reviewed their Confined Space qualifications and announced a new suite that became available earlier this year. The new 6160 suite of qualifications replace the existing 6150 ones which will continue to be available until 31st December.

Q. I’ve only just completed my City & Guilds 6150 (or: My City and Guilds 6150 Qualification is still valid for a year), do I need to complete the new qualification immediately?

These new qualifications are available now, with the existing qualifications (6150) being available until 31st December 2021. For anyone holding a current 6150 qualification, it will remain valid for three years from its completion so there’s no need to undertake the new 6160 qualification until it’s due to expire.

Q. Where are your training facilities?

Training can be delivered at our national specialist training facilities or at customer’s premises, utilising either their facility (based on a set criteria) or one of our mobile confined space units.

Arco Professional Safety Services currently has four specialist Safety Centres located at Enfield (South), Stafford (Midlands), Warrington (North West) and the newly-opened Linlithgow (Scotland). These centres are purpose-built facilities that have been specially designed to simulate real life hazards in a controlled environment.

Q. What are the training options at the moment, given current restrictions due to Covid-19?

Continuing to provide practical skills is essential in critical and high-risk industries and so Arco Professional Safety Services has adapted operations at its training centres to provide attendees with a safe learning environment and the reassurance they need to join safety critical training programmes. This includes new precautions, such as pre-start COVID questionnaires, non-contact body temperature checks, staggered break times to minimise unnecessary people movement and mixing and the use of larger rooms equipped with enclosure screens to ensure adequate social distancing. Arco Professional Safety Services has also launched a number of video conference options including a Confined Space Working Awareness half-day course and blended learning options, mixing online theory with practical learning.

Q. Do you offer any other kind of assistance for confined space working or emergencies?

Our services team provide confined space practical advice and service delivery in the areas of supervision, rescue, inspection, surveying & mapping, and cleaning & maintenance. Arco Professional Safety Services also provides 24/7 dedicated standby rescue teams and specialist confined space rescue consultants who are highly experienced in confined spaces safety and provide both 'entry' and 'non-entry' rescue solutions to businesses.

For more information on Arco’s Professional Safety Services Confined Spaces services, please visit
https://www.arcoservices.co.uk/home/confined-space

Article Originally Released in November 2020

THE DANGERS OF CONFINED SPACE WORKING SHOULD NEVER BE UNDERESTIMATED

Brian Grunes, Arco Professional Safety Services Confined Space training expert offers guidance on the risks of confined space working and the training you need to help prevent confined space accidents in the workplace.

A significant number of people are killed or seriously injured working in confined spaces in the UK each year. These accidents happen across a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, utilities, maritime, construction, offshore and agriculture. This includes workers in the confined space itself and those who may have to try to rescue them when things go wrong. Despite legislation and health and safety measures, these statistics highlight that confined space working poses a very high risk and it’s important to ensure that the right people have the correct skills and capabilities for the roles they undertake. Training is just one part of ensuring the safety of working in confined spaces.

The existence of confined spaces in some workplace environments can be reasonably easy to identify and understand. Tanks, vessels, sewers among others are known to be confined spaces to people working in those industries; however, the existence of confined spaces in commercial or non–industrial premises are less well known. Service ducts, lofts and void spaces, plant rooms or poorly ventilated rooms can be confined spaces too and often found in commercial buildings, hospitals, universities and residential dwellings. Some confined spaces will also develop during construction, or when work activities such as welding or cleaning is being carried out. These spaces are just as hazardous as those found in industrial environments and demonstrate that systems of safe working must be in place in every environment.

However, it may not be straight forward as confined spaces are not necessarily enclosed on all sides. For example, silos, vats, trenches and ship holds are not fully enclosed and may have open tops or sides. Confined spaces may also differ in size, ranging from small and difficult to work in to large like service reservoirs and ships holds. Some confined spaces are also used regularly by people during their work, for example paint spraying booths for car repairs.

It’s important in the first instance to identify confined spaces so that the right controls can be put into place. The Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) L1010 Safe Working in Confined Spaces provides details on the relevant provisions that must be considered. You will need to show you have followed the code or complied with the law in some other way otherwise a court will find you at fault.

The ACoP has a flow chart that helps in the decision-making process by establishing if a space is confined. There are two key parts:

• Is the space substantially or totally enclosed?
• One or more of the specified risks must be present or foreseeable

Specified Risks:

• Serious injury due to fire or explosion
• Loss of consciousness arising from increased body temperature
• Loss of consciousness or asphyxiation arising from gas, fume, vapour, or lack of oxygen
• Drowning from an increase in the level of a liquid
• Asphyxiation arising from a free-flowing solid or being unable to reach a respirable environment due to being trapped by such a free-flowing solid

It’s worth noting that if a space is identified as confined, then the regulations apply in full even when the specified risks are controlled. If a space becomes confined due to the nature of the activity being undertaken, for example due to fumes generated when cleaning, then the space may cease to be a confined space when the activity ends, and the fumes have been removed by ventilation.

The ACoP provides an excellent framework to follow with three core principles:

• Preventing the need for entry
• Safe working in confined spaces
• Emergency arrangements

Preventing the need for entry

In every situation you should not enter a confined space and should prevent employees and others from working in them where it is reasonably practicable to undertake the work without entering.

Examples:

• Testing the space from outside with long tools or probes
• Cleaning from outside with jetting, steam or in place cleaning systems
• Clearing blockages in silos where voids can form with remote operated flail devices
• Using remote cameras (CCTV) to see what’s happening inside.

Safe Working in Confined Spaces

The types precaution will depend on the nature of the space and the results of the risk assessment. There are elements to consider, such as: supervision, competence for the confined space work, communications, testing and monitoring of the atmosphere, ventilation, Personal Protective Equipment, Respiratory Protective Equipment and much more. These may also form the basis of a ‘permit to work’.

Safe procedures consist of all the appropriate precautions being taken in the correct sequence and a safe system of work will only ever be as good as its implementation.

Emergency Arrangements

No one should enter or work in a confined space unless emergency arrangements are in place that are appropriate to the identified level of risk. This may range from something as simple as self-rescue, to having full rescue capability with the presence of a team ready to enter and extract a casualty.

Training solutions

Arco Professional Safety Services offers a joined-up approach to health and safety training with a tailored mix of consultancy, training, services and safety equipment. We work with customers to help manage, transfer and mitigate risks for confined space working.

Practical confined space training options range from Confined Space Awareness Training, through Low, Medium and High Risk modules, plus Rescue Training and sessions covering the selection and maintenance of equipment involved in safe confined space working, such as gas monitors, breathing apparatus and personal protective equipment.

The confined space courses we offer are mapped against a range of National Occupational Standards (NOS) used by a range of Awarding Organisations (AOs) to produce assessment criteria for the level of qualification required. The main AO that we use for a range of awards is City & Guilds. We can also design and deliver a bespoke solution which works for your business.

The courses that we provide with regards to accreditation are mapped against the same standards to both ensure the quality and credibility of the product. This also ensures that if a situation develops which challenges the training, we can evidence against a range of learning outcomes that map back to the NOS.

Training on or off-site

Training can be delivered on or off-site, at one of the company’s specialist training facilities around the UK or, on site through Arco Professional Safety Services award-winning mobile Confined Space Training Units. Arco Professional Safety Services has four specialist Safety Centres located at Enfield (South), Stafford (Midlands), Warrington (North West) and the newly-opened Linlithgow (Scotland). These centres offer both indoor and outdoor purpose-built facilities that have been specially designed to simulate real life hazards in a controlled environment.

Using the Confined Space mobile training units, trainees are immersed in a highly realistic learning experience which offers different industrial confined space scenarios in a safe environment. Real-time videoing also allows for continual monitoring of activity, live instruction from the trainer and observed learning outside the tunnels system. Supporting services such as face-fit testing can be offered and accredited to Fit2Fit.

COVID-19

Continuing to provide practical skills is essential in critical and high-risk industries and so Arco Professional Safety Services has adapted operations at its training centres to provide attendees with a safe learning environment and the reassurance they need to join critical training programmes. This includes new precautions, such as pre-start COVID questionnaires, non-contact body temperature checks, staggered break times to minimise unnecessary people movement and mixing and the use of larger rooms equipped with enclosure screens to ensure adequate social distancing. Arco Professional Safety Services has also launched a number of video conference options including a Confined Space Working Awareness, half day course.

Other services

Arco Professional Safety Services also offers confined space inspection services such as detailed structural examinations in hazardous environments, remote controlled surveying of underground assets such as drainage and pipe systems and topographical surveys and mapping.

Arco Professional Safety Services also provides 24/7 dedicated standby rescue teams and specialist confined space rescue consultants who are highly experienced in confined spaces safety and provide both ‘entry’ and ‘non-entry’ rescue solutions to businesses.

For more information on Arco’s Professional Safety Services Confined Spaces services, please visit www.arcoservices.co.uk.

Arco Experts Support Longest Cave Rescue in Welsh History

In November 2021, nearly 300 people united to help rescue a man from the Ogof Ffynnon Ddu cave system near Penwyllt, Powys. The caver had fallen, leaving him trapped underground with severe injuries and at the centre of a rescue mission taking three gruelling days. Arco Professional Safety Service’s Equipment Department Manager, Mike Clayton, and Working at Height Training Department Instructor, Bartek Biela, were part of the rescue team as members of the Midlands Cave Rescue Organisation (MCRO).

MCRO is formed from local cavers and mine explorers who voluntarily assist others who may be lost or injured in the caves and mines of the West Midlands, Shropshire and beyond. Team members can be called day or night and undertake training in all aspects of the technical and medical requirements of underground search and rescue. In the case of the Brecon Beacons rescue, MCRO received a request to assist from the South & Mid Wales Cave Rescue Team to help bring the injured man through miles of passages to safety. As members of MCRO, Mike and Bartek were part of the response.

The 53-hour rescue demanded physical and mental strength and the right equipment techniques and teamwork. Arco Professional Safety Services sponsors MCRO’s training at its facility in Eccleshall every year, to provide the organisation’s members with realistic, practical training that simulates real-life hazards in a controlled environment. The Eccleshall site, equipped with five classrooms, offers facilities for confined spaces and working from height training. MRCO is reliant on the generosity of donors to operate and, ultimately, work to put skills into practice in a rescue scenario.

All MRCO members must have proven caving experience, whether through work, a club or as a member of the British Caving Association. At Arco Professional Safety Services, Bartek specialises in working at height and bespoke rescue training. These skills were put to immediate use during his first, 10-hour long, underground shift involving assisting with stretcher carrying and elements of rope work.

Bartek explains: “Part of my day-to-day role is teaching others how to safely access and recover casualty in an emergency access situation. Outside of work, my caving hobby started with a passion for exploring environments unlike anything that can be experienced above ground. Having this background and an understanding employer who allows us to go out to volunteer in these kinds of critical missions, means that we have the opportunity to take our work ethos of making the world a safer place to our personal life.”

Mike was tasked with rescue rigging, involving installing ropes and lowering systems to get the stretcher down safely. At Arco Professional Safety Services, Mike looks after the equipment department and advises on working at height and rescue techniques. Mike, comments: “Industrial rope access techniques were born from the sports of caving and climbing. This means a lot of the equipment is the same in industry and rescue, helping me to keep people safer at work and underground.”

Arco Professional Safety Services provide consultancy, training, services and equipment to manage the most complex and high-risk, high-hazard scenarios. Specialising in working at height, confined spaces and respiratory management, expert knowledge and experience mean the team can deliver solutions for situations with the highest risk of serious injury or irreversible damage to health.

For more information about the range of products and services provided by Arco Professional Safety Services, visit www.arcoservices.co.uk.

Photo caption: Image is for representation purposes only (cave rescue training exercise)