Page 89 - IGC BOOK

3.5 The Management of Change

Introduction

Workplace experience change frequently. Changes may be
due to various reasons including change in the process,
change in the equipment, change in the working practices
and construction work often referred to as temporary works.

Temporary work include demolition, renovation,
maintenance of building, short-term building projects
(constructing labour camp) and excavation works. Temporary
works can be very minor, short-duration work which includes
painting, dismantling of scaffold components, office
decoration, refurbishment works to the interior and exterior
of an old building, trench work for laying power cables or
communication cables.

The hazards of temporary nature or work can present
significant risks to the workers and others who are associated
with the temporary works. They may include own employees of the client for example quality
monitoring team. They may be engaged contractors to undertake construction work.

The hazards of temporary nature of work can also present risk to those who might or might not
be involved to the business such as a visitor or trespassers.

For example, external lamp cleaning and maintenance work were undertaken by external
contractors at a leisure centre run by a local council could potentially present the risk to:

• The workers themselves.
• Leisure centre staff.
• Leisure centre customers (including children, the elderly and the disabled).
• Members of the public passing by outside the site.

The establishment of a temporary work site within an existing work can disrupt the ‘usual’
control measures that will already exist within that workplace. Again, the disruption caused will
depend very much on the nature of the existing work and the nature of the temporary works.
Examples would include:

• Disruption to the one-way system of an on-site vehicle traffic route caused by emergency
drain repair works to part of the traffic route.
• Isolation of part of an automatic fire detection system because of hot works in one part of a
multi-story building.
• Closure of a fire escape route because of refurbishment works to the corridor and stairway
that forms a part of the escape route.

ENSIGN| Unit IG1 – Element 3 – Managing Risks – Understanding People and Processes 44