Reasons to use contractors with professional health and safety procedures

This is an article written by Sian MacGowan MIIRSM the Business Development Director of Sureteam Ltd who are the company I use for my Health and Safety advice.

“In a client/contractor arrangement, both the client and the contractor have responsibilities under Health and Safety legislation. Any employer that uses a contractor to undertake work for them must ensure that the contractor is competent to do the work and uses safe working practices. The contractor is duty bound to comply with any Health and Safety arrangements.

It pays to use companies who understand their obligations under the law and have made a conscious decision to ensure that they include Health and Safety as an integral part of their business. They train their staff in Health and Safety, undertake risk assessments and develop Safe Systems of Work to ensure that they have controls in place to reduce risk to their own staff and those clients for whom they work.

Sureteam Ltd provide Roy Adair and his team with on-going competent advice  for those times when they need a little more expertise to ensure they are covering all the bases. We are at the end of a phone or an email for advice or can go out to site to assist them if needs be. All this makes working with a contractor an altogether safer option for companies looking to employ a cabling contractor.”

As stated it is vital to for all concerned to use companies with professional procedures, Open Network Associates Ltd are accredited by Safecontractor who oversee our H & S procedures.

IT Cabling - Moving office

Technology is vital to any business and the foundation stone of this technology is the network cabling that is installed.

Many people consider that “it’s just a wire” wrong! The cables used these days are high performance, high frequency cables and can be affected by numerous sources of electrical noise like light fittings and power cables.

It is critical that these cables are installed by specialist installers who can look at the building as a whole, consider the other services that are going to be put in the building and recommend a cabling system to combat any possible issues.

Also important is that the cabling installer has detailed discussions with the client to find out what they require of their IT systems, how the system is going to plug together and where they see the IT systems progressing in the future. Only specialist installers can offer this type of service.

Sometimes there will be existing cabling within a building which on the face of it is a good thing, however you would do well to consider the following –

• Is the cable suitable for your proposes
• Is it installed correctly
• Do all the cables work
• Are they in the correct position

Specialist data cabling installers can help with this by looking in detail at the installation, taking into consideration the requirements of the client following the discussions held beforehand. If the cabling looks like it is suitable then it should be re-tested with a network cable tester like a Fluke DTX1800 to make sure all the lines are OK, these test results should then be made available to the client, each test result should include graph’s to show the performance of the cable at different frequencies.

Another aspect of moving to new premises is how these services are going to be installed, i.e. in Dado trunking or through a false ceiling or a false floor, all of these need different considerations with regards to the data cabling as well as the power. For instance certain Dado trunking systems are not suitable for certain types of data cabling due to bend radius issues, what containment is to be used under the floor and in the ceiling, all of these things if not thoroughly considered can affect the performance of the IT network and therefore the business as a whole.

Another aspect of IT provision are the telephone and broadband services, this is best dealt with by employing an independent telecoms specialist. The independent supplier will look at the whole market and will interface with BT if necessary to get lines transferred etc. in a timely manner so taking this stress off of the client.

It is important that any network cable installer and Telecoms specialist is involved at an early stage and works with the clients IT department or IT support supplier so that the above planning can be put in place, this will avoid last minute panics and will make sure that the installation or the retesting is planned for and executed efficiently and that the broadband and voice lines are transferred seamlessly.