as a tradesman mechanic, seeing an old-timer like Fred at work makes me swoon. in the states due to OSHA regulations, there are quite a few reasons why this sort of work would never get done, but Freds attention to safety and detail cant be missed.
Mr. Dibnah is a master craftsman. he makes scaling this chimney look like a sunday stroll.
OSHA... I have never once seen, nor heard of anyone who has seen, someone who works for OSHA.
I'm starting to think they aren't real... everyone is so sure that "OSHA won't like [that which is about to be attempted]" and it hasn't ever stopped anyone from doing profoundly stupid stuff, except for new guys. Still, I've never seen them, been alerted to their presence, or met anyone who has (I've been asking for 20+ years.)
obviously they are real, but they are in no way the ever-present threat they are made out to be.
OSHA has 2200 employees. They're not a large agency.
That being said, they're like the SEC (which only has around 4800) in that they heavily rely on employees (and incidental bystanders) to report unsafe worksites. The fact that you haven't had to interact with them is either a really good or really bad thing.
OHSA doesn't operate by inspection but by report. If your employees report your job site, you're gonna get busted. And if your employees are getting injured, they're gonna report your violations.
Every person on your site is a OHSA inspector in disguise.
The problem is they will be present AFTER the accident for the investigation and then find out what shortcuts were taken and who was at fault/irresponsible.
I fear it is the same with anyone who mentions “ISO compliance” and how we will “fail our audit if you get caught” as a reason not to do something.
I have never seen these prognostications come true. It really seems like it’s just a way for naysayers to rain on peoples parades, or appeal to authority as an way of stopping people from doing things when really they just don’t like them.
It leaves an extremely unpleasant taste in the mouth and it’s an absolute must to probe this kind of thing when interviewing candidates.
> It really seems like it’s just a way for naysayers to rain on peoples parades
Or you know, i’m not going to die to maximise your profit. You go right ahead and circumvent sane and safe working practices as long as it is only your life on the line.
You turned my point around. I’m not talking about a random colleague forcing a peer to do something unsafe.
I’m talking about a random colleague seeing their peer wanting to do something and their reaction being “I don’t think you should do that because of a contrived reason which an auditor will say is against security / safety best practices.” Except they don't know this – their just making stuff up to be disruptive, show-off, sound-clever, boost their esteem, etc.
Bystanders whose sole contribution is to think of reasons not to do something — without taking responsibility for getting stuff done — are net-negative strong no-hires.
Are you sure you watched his videos? Fred had virtually no attention to safety.
He would proudly promote that he would climb those towers after drinking pints of beer down the pub. He's a lovable person and I've watched nearly all of his TV work but safety was not his priority.
This short clip of people running from one of Dibnah's chimney demolitions going wrong is quite instructive. None of the bystanders should have been allowed anywhere near!
> there are quite a few reasons why this sort of work would never get done
Doing those chimney climbs safely, with fall protection, is pretty easy these days. It's so easy that I've seen videos of urban explorers, base jumpers, etc. using perfectly good fall protection, even while doing illegal things!
Remember we're looking at a video from 1978: modern fall protection gear simply wasn't widely available back then.
Mr. Dibnah is a master craftsman. he makes scaling this chimney look like a sunday stroll.