Safety Changes In The Construction Industry
For people and businesses in the construction industry safe and efficient working practices should always have been at the forefront of your mind. Recent changes in the law have now seen the onus for safety extend to the client or persons having construction or building work carried out. This article looks at the implications the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 may have on clients, contractors and workers in the construction industries. And the first part of this article looks at Your Responsibilities as a Client.
To begin with it is perhaps worth looking at what the CDM regulations are and put simply they have been introduced to ensure construction projects are safe to build, use and be maintained whilst delivery good value to the client. As well as this they have also been put into place to ensure through good health and safety planning projects are well managed and problems and unexpected costs are kept to minimum levels.
For some this may seem like yet more regulation and unnecessary paperwork and processes but in reality the CMD 2007 regulations have been introduced to ensure construction and building work is done by competent people who work safely and efficiently.
When it comes to requirements of clients (or the person having the work carried out) the regulations do not apply to domestic clients. A domestic client is defined as being someone who will or does live in the premises where the work is being carried out. The premises at which at work is being done must not also relate to any trade, business or other undertaking for the client to be deemed as domestic.
So if you are a non domestic client under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 you have to take the following steps.
1. Appoint the right people. Trade associations are a great way to find designers and contractors who are competent, have sufficient resources and will carry out work safely.
2. Allow enough time for your project. Failing to allow for adequate time for the design, planning and construction is likely to mean more chance of it being unsafe or of a poor quality.
3. Information is vital. To ensure your project runs smoothly you have to ensure that your construction team is told what you want, how you will use it as well as details of the site, structures and hazards as this will allow them to plan, budget and work to your exact requirements.
4. Communication and co operation. Injuries, overspending at a later stage and misunderstandings can all be kept to a minimum if you, your contractors and your designers communicate and co operate as much as possible.
5. Management. Having adequate and suitable management in place is vital for construction projects as they can be extremely complex due to the various types of contractors and tradesmen all working together. And as some of these contractors are involved in high risk activities (for example, roofing contractors and scaffolding contractors) then it is important that management arrangements are in place to ensure all work done is safe and is completed in a timely manner. Clearly contractors like roofers and scaffolders will have their own ways of working and protection in the form of construction insurance, scaffolders insurance and contractors insurance but management of all parts of the project and checks should be done to ensure all parties are working with safety in mind.
6. On site Welfare facilities. You should ensure that workers on your site have been provided with adequate welfare facilities before work starts including any information needed for the health and safety file.
7. Workplace design. It is up to you to make sure your design team complies with the standards set out in the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 if your project is for changes to an existing workplace (eg office or factory) or if the project is for a new workplace.
In addition to the above requirements as a client you also have to make sure you do the following for notifiable construction projects with the definition of notifiable construction work being that which lasts longer than 30 days or involves 500 person days of work.
For these projects you also have to ensure that.
8. You appoint a CDM co coordinator. Although CDM 2007 doesnt mean your Construction Design and Management coordinator has to supervise or monitor work on site you should appoint one before the initial design and preparation stage. Their role will range from helping you select competent designers and contractors to making sure the Health and Safety Executive is notified of your project.
9. You appoint a main contractor. A main or principle contractor will plan, co ordinate and manage work on notifiable jobs whilst construction work is being done
10. You have health & safety plans. Work should not commence on site until the principal contractor has produced a construction phase health and safety plan that ensures that work will be carried out safety
11. You keep a health & safety file. The health & safety file should contain a record of health and safety information and should be given to your at the end of your project by the CDM co coordinator. This file should be used in the future by anyone who is looking to maintain, repair or demolish the building.
Failure to comply with CDM 2007 from a clients point of view could result in construction work being stopped by HSE or your local authority. Likewise failure to take the necessary steps to ensure good health and safety procedures are in place could dramatically increase the chances of a dangerous or fatal incident occurring whilst your construction work is carried out. And in the most serious cases you could even find yourself open to prosecution.
Make sure your site is safe, you have a duty to do so.
Northern Counties Insurance Brokers are The UK Leading Business Insurance Brokers and Construction Insurance is available from them at http://www.northerncounties.com/construction-insurance.php
The History Of Air Conditioning
Air conditioning has come a long way since the concept was first thought of. Advances in technology and science have enabled modern – day inventors to design systems that are a lot more practical and effective than those that were thought of a hundred years ago.
An American physician, Dr. John Gorrie was the first person to try to make an air conditioner in the 1830s. He designed an ice making machine that blew air over a bucket of ice in order to cool hospital rooms. Needless to say this wasn’t the most effective method and on a very hot day sometimes the effects could hardly be felt.
A more effective but less practical method of air conditioning was developed in 1881 when President James Garfield was dying. Naval engineers constructed a box – like structure which contained cloths that were soaked in melted ice water and then used a fan to blow hot air overhead. Even though it helped by lowering the temperature of the room by 20 degrees Fahrenheit, it consumed half a million pounds of ice in the space of two months and therefore wasn’t very practical at all.
Air conditioning units became more advanced in 1902 when an American engineer, Willis Carrier designed a unit for his publishing company. He used chilled coils in the machine in order to cool the air and lower the humidity. This set the standard for air conditioning units and new developments were constantly being made.
They were first used in printing plants, textile mills, manufacturers and hospitals and it wasn’t until much later that they started to be used in homes. However, these units started out as big, expensive and dangerous because of the toxic ammonia that was used as a coolant.
In 1922 Carrier had two major breakthroughs. Instead of using ammonia in his air conditioning units, he used dielene which was much better for the environment and added a central compressor so that he could reduce the size of his units. A movie theatre was the first commercial operation to purchase an air conditioning unit and this was soon followed by office buildings, department stores and car manufacturers. This saw the beginning of a craze for air conditioning as everyone now wanted it.
It is undeniable that air conditioning is an invention that people can live without, especially in very hot countries. Thankfully these units have come a long way since the idea was first thought of an they now tend to go unnoticed as they can sit on a wall and are much quieter as well.
Kimpton Building Services has been providing essential building services to clients for over 40 years. http://www.kimpton.ltd.uk has a breadth of expertise across the construction and allied industries.
How To Build Websites In Cheap Way
If you want a professional designer to help your build or custom your website, you must be prepared to get out at least a few hundred dollars from your wallet. However, if you know where to find the best deals, the best designs for the lowest price, then things can change.
Following are some guideless regards to website design issues:
First, you need to understand that it is a rip off to get companies to design websites for you.
If you ever see these newspapers, in the classify section, you may have noticed that some website design company’s ads, which offer a 5-page website at $500?
One of the reasons for them to charge high fees is because these companies are established with physical locations, so their operating cost is higher than those firms that do not have physical location. The fees you see is already included some overhead cost, like office rent, designer’s wages, advertising costs and so on.
Therefore, it would be wise to find freelance designers who work from home that do not have a high operation cost to help your build the websites. Some of them have really good creative and design skills, the quality of work they deliver just like those designers from big companies, so it’s a “no-brainer” choice.
However, when you choose freelancers, don’t forget with care. The best way to do this is to go to elance dot com. In there, you can post the abstract of your project and you will get thousands of freelancers to bid on it, so get the best deal is not difficult.
On top of that, you can select and choose who you feel comfortable to work with based on their experience, past transactions and ratings; so your value for money will not be wasted.
Another cheap way to go is to design your website by yourself.
Think about it, if you only need 5 simple pages to display some simple information, why waste hundreds of dollars for it? Why don’t just spend a little time sit down and do it yourself?
You should believe your capability and your own potential; it is not difficult to put up a 5 pages website. Believe it or not, you can design your own sites even if you do not know a single line of HTML code with the help of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs, such as using Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver and some other website builder software.
In addition, to get things in order and let everything work well, you need to have a workable website design plan in hand. With have a well thought website design layout, you will be able to create a site that generates multiple streams of revenue for you.
If you don’t have a well planned layout and just want to get the site up online fast, your site will not get a single visitor and it will fall into wasteland, also the webmaster will not be motivated to update it anymore and eventually your sites will turn into wasted cyberspace.
So to get a well planned site layout in place is essential, clearly define each major blocks’ position will help you do better categorizing.
After you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your website, you can start to sell space on the pages to people that interested in advertising on your site. You can also put programs like Google’s Adsense and Yahoo! Search Marketing’s ads into the pages, and make some income if people surf to those themed pages and click on the ads.
As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will bear more results than on magazines or offline media. Hence, you should start to tapping into this lucrative stream of profit and get your website ready.
Ann Liu, internet marketer and author of http://www.onlineprofiting.com. To learn how YOU too can succeed in Internet and affiliate marketing, please visit http://www.marketingbyann.com.
How Does Air Conditioning Work?
Air conditioning can seem like a complicated concept if you don’t know how it works. Not many people do understand how the process works and therefore don’t know what to look for when buying a unit. However, it can actually be very simple and straightforward once you have a basic understanding of the topic.
Air conditioning units work in a similar way to refrigerators in the sense that instead of cooling just a small space, they can cool an entire room, house or even building. This is done with a chemical that is used to transfer heat from the air inside to the outside air. The reason why an air conditioning unit is able to do this is because the chemical that is used can easily convert from a gas to a liquid and back again.
There are three main parts to an air conditioning unit and these are the compressor, the condenser and the evaporator. The fluid that is in the unit arrives at the compressor as a cool, low – pressure gas which is then squeezed by the compressor. This is done to pack the molecules in the fluid closer together because the closer they are together the faster they move and the higher the energy levels and temperature are.
The fluid leaves the compressor hot and with high pressure and enters the condenser. By the time it leaves the condenser in the air conditioning unit its temperature is much cooler and has changed from a gas to a liquid under the high pressure. The liquid then goes into the evaporator and by the time it comes back out its pressure has dropped and it begins to evaporate into a gas.
This is where the air conditioning really starts to work because as this process is happening, it extracts the heat from the air around it making it cooler. In order to ensure that there is an even distribution of cool air, there is a fan connected to the evaporator which circulates the air inside the building.
This process is then repeated again and again with the fluid entering the compressor. It can be repeated as many times as desired until the correct air conditioning temperature is reached in the room. The thermostat senses that the temperature has reached the right setting and it automatically turns of the air conditioner. If and when the room starts to warm up again, the thermostat turns the air conditioner back on until the room reaches the desired temperature.
Kimpton Building Services has been providing essential building services to clients for over 40 years. http://www.kimpton.ltd.uk has a breadth of expertise across the construction and allied industries.