Jobsworths

In this day and age there is a voluminous amount of health and safety legislation intending to safeguard people from injury and it is unfortunate that interpretation of this legislation is sometimes totally misunderstood by many, including jobsworths in the safety profession who have a “Why we can’t do” attitude rather than the “How we can do” attitude.

Anything is possible, if you really want something to happen and you have the vision and the will – it really is not that difficult.

Could you imagine if the legislative constraints we have today were present in the 18th century and you were approached by Louis-Sebastion Lenormand of France who is credited with the invention of the parachute as we know it today, and he actually made the first recorded public jump back in 1783.

Jobsworths would undoubtedly have dismissed the idea of being presented with a timber frame with linen stretched over it, with a claim that this would be sufficient to prevent a person plummeting from height to certain death on the ground below, as ludicrous, and would probably have attempted to have Monsieur Lenormand committed to a secure psychiatric institution (obviously for his own safety).

What would have been a far better approach would have been to investigate if any calculations had been undertaken to ascertain if the timber structure was of sufficient strength for the loads to be imposed upon it. Equally as important would have been to determine if the linen was of adequate strength and that all the fixings to hold the frame together and attach the linen to the frame were suitable and sufficient.

Of course one sure fire way to test this invention would have been to try it out! This method probably occurred back in the day; however it would have been much wiser on a windless day to take the parachute up a high structure, cordon off a suitable area below where the parachute was intended to be released. Attach a weight equivalent to the person the parachute had been designed for, and simply release it over the edge and observe the outcome.

Simple but effective, clearly there would be more to it than that suggested above, however you will get the gist of the “How we can do” attitude we have here at Crown Psm Limited.