Risk Assessment & Safe Systesm Of Work

Whitelee Wind Farm is a Scottish Power facilities situated on Eaglesham Moor, some 17 miles from Glasgow city centre. This is the largest wind farm in Europe boasting 140 wind turbines.

Scottish Power have introduce a guided tour of this site, where visitors are shown the turbines and the many ponds that a spread throughout the site.

Some of the water from the ponds is used to supply the surrounding area with drinking water. Scottish Water who previously owned the moor stipulated that pollution of the water course was not acceptable, and if Scottish Power were to introduce a tour then a pollution free method of transport was required.

Scottish power purchased one of three electric buses which were built for Strathclyde Public Transport (SPT) by Smiths Electric Vehicles. SPT never made full use of these buses.

The bus used on the Whitelee site is powered by 54 lead acid gel batteries, arranged in two parallel banks of 27. These batteries are located within the bus chassis.

Mechanically the bus is a standard design, with the typical front wishbone and rear trailing arm suspension. The braking system is air over hydraulic, incorporating an air activated spring loaded fail safe parking brake.

It is the power-train that is powered by the lead acid gel batteries and the ancillary systems are powered by two 12V heavy duty commercial vehicle batteries which connected in series will give the required 24V to power the ancillary systems,

Risk Assessment

The following pages incorporate a hazard checklist, risk assessment and safe systems of work for the use of the bus at the Whitelee facility.

The hazard checklist was completed to form a qualitative risk assessment highlighting the where and why an incident was likely to occur.

The information gathered from the checklist was then used to compile the risk assessment.

The risks were classified according the likelihood of occurrence and the severity of the possible injury.

The risks were scored from 1 to 25, where 1 shows there is no inherent risk involved in the task, and 25 shows this task to be highly dangerous and could result in fatal or debilitating injury. The risk register has a copy of the scoring mechanism at the bottom of the page.

From this a Safe System of Work was complied to sever as an aid memoir. This highlight the salient points of the risk register to ensure risk of injury is kept to a minimum.

Safe System of Work

In compiling any Safe System of Work, the following steps give a good example of what points need to be reviewed.

• The tas
• What is the work being carried out
• What specialist tools are used
• Who will do the task
• Hazards associated with the task
• From tooling
• From plant and other equipment
• From substances
• Risk Assessment
• Assess risks arising from the task
• Define a safe method of work
• Break task down into individual parts
• Specify safe method
• Produce documented work instructions
• Implementation & operation
• Ensure members of staff carrying out the task are adequately trained
• Record training
• Carryout regular checks and re-assess as appropriate

In the case of the bus, I have identified two different tasks, the first being the daily maintenance, the other being the actually driving of the bus on the tour.

The hazards associated with the tasks are dependent on which task is being carried out.

The following pages are exemplar Safe Systems of Work for the daily maintenance of the bus and for driving the bus on a tour.