C A M H A S

Manual Handling

(COMPUTER ASSISTED MANUAL HANDLING ASSESSMENTS SYSTEM)

The Manual Handling Regulations 1992 require that an assessment is carried out to determine those operations where manual handling is necessary. Those that are considered to be necessary are to be further assessed to determine the level of risk workers are exposed to. Where it is considered that the workforce is exposed to any degree of risk, that risk must be eliminated or reduced. This process of risk assessment must be recorded where the operation cannot faithfully be reproduced.

The programme has been designed to follow precisely, the Guidance Notes produced with the Manual Handling Regulations and, like the other programmes in the Executive suite, is designed to be extremely user friendly. Whilst Supervisors / Managers are not required to be experts in ergonomics, they are, together with their operatives, experts in their field of operations in the workplace. Using this logic, the programme uses the knowledge of the supervisor and operatives to assist in carrying out the Manual Handling Risk Assessment.

The programme produces two proforma, one for a seated operation and one for a standing operation. By using one or other of these two proforma (depending on the operation being assessed) to answer a series of very simple questions, the assessment is able to be carried out by supervisors and / or workers and a series of recommendations produced by the programme in light of answers given to the questions . On completion of the assessment, from experience gained thus far, a meeting should be held to determine how best to carry out actions to the recommendations produced by the programme.

Those attending such a meeting will vary from site to site but will typically comprise, a senior manager with authority to act on recommendations and representatives of supervision and workforce from the department or section of the business where the assessment was carried out. In this way, task and management expertise are brought together to solve common problems in the most efficient and cost effective manner.

For those tasks which are similar but sufficiently dissimilar to warrant a separate, non-generic assessment, the programme has a 'look-a-like' facility to enable similar tasks to be assessed with minimal amounts of additional work. This facility can also be used to carry out an assessment on a task previously assessed and where the work practice has altered, perhaps as a result of work carried out following the original assessment or, as a result of general business efficiency drives.