Health & Safety At Work

[Aginicky]

Last Tuesday at work I got an electric shock from my PC and immediately afterwards could smell something like an electrical appliance had burnt out. My senior manager asked me not to touch the PC and went to see if anyone from Facilities could deal with it. No one was there. Next day at work I was asked if I had contacted IT about it. I was lost for words because this was an incident which happened to me and here was the senior manager asking me to deal with IT to have a look at it.

Anyway, I contacted Facilities and also IT. Facilities arranged for an electrician to look at the power point. The ************ idiot, as far as I could see, was looking in the wrong places for the socket which the PC plug was plugged into. No wonder he could not find any fault!

This morning IT came and had a look at it and informed me that there was a hardware fault, a charge despite the plug being pulled out was still indicating there was power on the PC and that it was dangerous, as well as needing replacement.

No doubt if I asked the senior manager why she wasn't dealing with it she would say that she has more important priorities. Uh? More important than getting to the bottom of myself almost being electrocuted?

What should I do? I feel like phoning up AccidentLine!

[StoneHenge]

They need to document it on their system as a near miss, due to the fact that it could have caused a potentially serious accident and injury to you, and they need to complete an investigation into why it happened and what action they are going to take to prevent it from occurring again.

Do you have a H&S rep at work? I don't think this reportable to the HSE but it is worth noting they DO need to document this officially as a near miss, and find the root cause and put good the damage.

Good luck.

[Aginicky]

Thanks StoneHenge for advice. I'll chase up Facilities on Monday for a form and see how things go. I'll have to make sure that this doesn't get pushed aside.

[Jewel_Peacock]

Stonehenge is correct, but if you don't start to get any joy about this let me know - I have plenty of experience in this area :)