Merridale keep standards high with their health & safety systems

For some companies and their employees, the dreaded term ‘health & safety’ is often considered boring, tedious and pedantic. However, for Merridale it’s something they see as a major part of their pursuit of excellence.

Operations Manager, Andrew Tromans, has been responsible for improving and sharpening health & safety standards at Merridale for more than three years. As well as accumulating over thirty years’ experience in manufacturing, his professional background consists of more than 10 years of responsibility for H&S systems. During his development he obtained the City & Guilds Diploma in Occupational H&S, the NEBOSH Environmental Management Certificate and the NEBOSH general H&S certificate.

Since joining the company, Andrew has been instrumental in ensuring the quality management processes are of an exceptionally high standard. This is required in order to maintain their ‘Safe Contractor’ accreditation and meet the ‘preferred supplier’ status for local government authorities and large business enterprises who seek assurance that equipment specifications are fully compliant with current legal requirements.

In order to carry out every aspect of the manufacturing and installation process in a safe and thorough manner, Merridale use a comprehensive catalogue of method statements and risk assessments which relate to each unique job. On this, Andrew said “We issue these statements based on the actual work to be done for each job, not just as a flat statement to cover all occasions. Every job is different in some way, so our preparation must reflect that.”

Merridale’s H&S systems are strictly based on the requirements for OHSAS 18001, a standard for occupational health and safety management systems, and they are proud that they have never had any major incidents or RIDDOR reportable near misses. They have also never been served an improvement notice by HSE.

“We have a full staff training scheme with regular refresher courses to ensure that all staff get the training and guidance they need. Every aspect is considered. For example, all our electricians are fully certified and, even though our workforce is only moderately sized, we have multiple qualified first aiders on site.”

“For our customers, this allows them to rest assured that we have considered the risks involved in their particular installation or service work and will take upmost care to carry out every job safely and thoroughly, as well as to an excellent standard.”