[0:06]Hi. Let's start with your self introduction. My name is Muhammad. So far as my educational qualification is concerned, I'm a graduate, and I have completed a one-year advanced diploma in industrial fire and safety management from Gulf Institute. I have been awarded with some accomplishments, some awards from my institute, such as crafting a confined space model and presenting it in the best way among my classmates, and I have worked in a company for one year as a health and safety officer. All right, Mr. tell me the course that you have done. You have just told that you have completed advanced diploma in industrial fire and safety management. What was the course syllabus? So I was taught five different books. in the first book, I was taught about the health and safety management system where I was taught safety management, some training programs, permit to work system, safety audit, and some legal requirements like how to investigate accidents. These were some topics I was taught. Okay, what do you think if you were hired as a safety officer? What would be your roles and responsibilities at the project? My responsibilities would be to provide training to workers, to write safety observation reports of how workers perform their work activities at the work site, to implement permit to work system, and to investigate accidents, to find out different causes of the accident, and to provide induction training to workers, to carry out risk assessment, job safety analysis, and to develop health and safety policy, uh to develop emergency planning and procedures at the work site. Okay. Could you explain the topics that are discussed in an induction training? in an induction training, we first discuss the uh description of the company, uh its layout, uh where we locate offices, uh some welfare facilities such as offices and uh restroom areas, uh canteen facilities. Then we talk about work equipment and machines being used in the company. uh hazards associated with them and how to work safely to uh avoid injuries. Uh we talk about different types of permit to work system being used for different work activities. We talk about different training programs uh that we provide to workers. Uh we talk about fire fighting training and fire fighting management where we teach workers how to use fire extinguishers. Uh we provide training on emergency planning and procedures where we teach newly hired workers how to behave during an emergency. Okay. Tell me uh define hazard and occupational disease. Hazard is anything which has the potential to cause harm, health effect or property damage. Uh sorry, what was the second question? Occupational disease. Occupational disease is something when you carry out some hazardous substance and you get sick, ill from that. So that would be occupational disease. That would that would be due to using uh hazardous substance or a toxic chemical or paint. Okay, give me a few examples of occupational diseases. Uh that could be shortness in breathing or cuffness, abdomen pain. Uh redness, uh rashes in your hands, your skin. So these are some examples of occupational disease. What is the difference between a near miss and a dangerous occurrence? A near miss is defined as an incident that does not result into any kind of injuries, but it had the potential to do so. A dangerous occurrence is a major accident that should be reported to enforcement agencies within 24 hours after the occurrence. Okay. What is risk assessment and what are different types of risk assessments? Risk assessment is a careful examination of identifying, evaluating, and controlling risks and hazards. There are different types of risk assessments such as quantitative risk assessment, qualitative risk assessment, generic risk assessment, uh hazard identification of risk assessment. These are some categories. What are the steps of a risk assessment? The steps of risk assessment are identify the hazards, identify who might be harmed and how, evaluate the risks and decide on precautions, implement your findings, review and update if necessary. If you were given a a risk assessment to carry out, like imagine that there is some certain work activity, let's imagine gas welding is to be carried out at your work site and you have been assigned the responsibility of carrying out a risk assessment. How would you identify hazards? Uh there are different ways of carrying out risk assessment. Uh first, I will visit the work site to ensure the work environment. I will see the work equipment, workers involved in the work activity. I will ensure that the workers involved are trained. the equipment being used is in safe order. and I will ensure the hazards associated with that. Then I will evaluate the risk to find out the risk level. If it is unacceptable, then I will implement some extra control measures there. Then I will follow up the recommended control measures after implementing it to ensure that it's effective. And if I find out that we need some further control measures, then we shall review and update that. All right. uh Tell me the difference between a JSA and a risk assessment. JSA has two two main differences. The first difference is that we carry out a JSA for a particular work activity. Whereas we carry out risk assessment for the work activity, considering the environment environmental factors around the work activity is being carried out. The second difference would be uh risk evaluation. In JSA, we don't have any steps called risk evaluation, but in risk assessment, we have the third step evaluating the level of risks for implementing control measures. All right. What is HIRA? HIRA is defined as hazard identification of risk assessment, similar to risk assessment for identifying, evaluating and controlling hazards of work activity. Okay. Could you explain me the difference between a safety inspection and a safety audit? Safety inspection is conducted frequently at the work site. It is especially for equipment and machines being used by workers. Whereas a safety audit is a thorough examination uh to ensure that the company is complying with safety rules and regulations, where we uh where we oversee uh some documents such as health and safety policy, risk assessment, training records of workers, permit to work, and so on. Define permit to work. Permit to work is a legal document used to ensure that we comply with safety requirements for hazardous work activities. Give me a name of jobs that would require permit to work system. Hot work activity, it requires using permit to work, excavation, demolition, working at height, uh lifting operation, chemical handling, these are some activities. Are there types in permit to work? Yes. there are two types of permit to work system. hot work permit and cold work permit. And what do you understand by these terms? Hot work and cold work? Hot work permit could be defined as a type of permit that that should only be used for activities that generates spark, heat and light. On the other hand, we use cold work permit for every kind of activity that does not release such uh these elements. Do we, do we use same permit for all hot work activities? No, we don't. We should have some specific permit to work system for different hot work activities depending on the work equipment being used and the type of workers working, the environment and everything. All right. Tell me about first aid. What is it? First is a medical treatment given to the injured worker before the arrival of actual emergency. Now, can you tell me the name of things that should be kept in a first aid box? That would be scissors, uh antibiotic, uh pain killers, band aids, adhesive band aids. And what about the emergency equipments that should be available in a first aid room? For there should be a first a qualified first aider for that. and we must have at least one oxygen cylinder in the emergency forst area. and we should have stretcher so that we can carry the injured worker to that emergency room. So All right. If if something goes wrong at your project, imagine that a worker is using a ladder and he falls down from the ladder. He's lying there, crying in pain. You are the first person to approach that injured person. What would you do exactly? So first of all, I will try not to get panic at that time, because that's a very that's a very important thing. and I will try to immediately report the accident to the nearby workers or by raising the alarm. And I will immediately contact the emergency service. At the same time, I will look for a stretcher to carry the injured worker to the emergency for area, and I will immediately contact the first aider if I'm not qualified for that. And we shall try to provide some initial medical treatment to the worker. What is accident investigation and what are the benefits of carrying out accident investigation? Accident investigation is examination of identifying the leading causes of the accident. And there are various reasons of carrying out investigation at the work site. The first reason would be it's a legal requirement of many standards such as Osha, that requires us to carry out accident investigation, besides to identify different causes of an accident, so that we can prevent the occurrence. It should be conducted to ensure that the recommended control measures are effective, or it needs it needs to be improved. We carry out accident investigation to promote safety awareness among workers, to develop a positive culture in health and safety environment of our company. These are some reasons. What are the causes behind an accident? Uh we categorize uh in three different categories, underlying, immediate and root causes. Immediate causes are unsafe acts and some conditions. There is a chance of an accident to happen when an unsafe act and condition meets together. Underlying causes would be uh lack of safety requirements, lack of implementations, that would be lack of supervision, lack of training programs given to workers, uh lack of uh PPEs to workers and lack of development of plants like permit to work system or risk assessment. Root causes would be management failures where we highlight management commitment, which has to be negative, which which mostly is found negative if an accident happens due to that reason, where managers, uh employers don't take interest in participating in health and safety and allocating resources to control and manage risks and hazards. All right. Tell me something, what is the purpose of health and safety policy? What is health and safety policy and what is the purpose of health and safety policy? Health and safety policy is a clear statement from the employer towards health and safety. It has some requirements that a company needs to fulfill. That would be providing a safe environment for workers. That would be carrying out some health and safety documents such as risk assessment, providing training to workers, providing safe equipment and machines to worker. If an accident happens, there is a requirement to investigate immediately to identify different causes. So these are some purposes of using health and safety policy. All right. it's very important to develop competence among workers and to make them competent the best way or the most effective way is training them. Can you name a few different types of trainings that are given to workers to make them competent? So when a new person is hired in a company, we first provide induction training to make worker familiar with the work environment, machines, like the whole company. We provide toolbox talk training to workers before any work activity, to train them with some hazards associated with the work they're going to carry out. We provide job specific training for different types of jobs. That would be hot work activity, work at height activity. Besides, we provide SOP safe operating procedure training to workers where we uh train them on how to use uh equipment safely. We provide training on how to behave safely during an emergency, which we call emergency planning and procedure. We provide fire fighting training to workers where they are trained on how to use fire equipment, fire fighting equipment such as fire extinguishers and different sort of equipment, and they also know how to behave during an emergency, how to evacuate, where to assemble. So What are general PPEs and work specific PPEs? General PPEs would be hard hat, safety boot, high visibility cloth, uh hand gloves, and safety goggles. For different jobs, we have different we have specific PPEs, such as for hot work, we have facial. If we are doing welding work activity, there should be uh welding goggles, leather gloves, apron. These are some PPEs we provide. What are some different breathing protection PPEs, RP, respiratory protective equipment? We can provide SCBA, self-contained breathing apparatus or uh there's one more, like I cannot recall right now. So that's what we provide if the environment, if the atmosphere is not safe to work. So we provide self-contained breathing apparatus, uh for a short period of time, or we can use gas detectors to detect the types of gas available there. We can use purging system as well, to purify the environment, to purge the environment by using some inert gases that would be nitrogen or carbon dioxide. And we can train workers on frequently uh do gas perform gas testing into confined space to ensure there is no generation of any new type of flammable or toxic gas, or the concentration of oxygen is constant in normal temperature. What general precautions should be undertaken when carrying out work in a confined space? The area should be barricaded. workers should be trained to work into a confined space. They must have some past experience. There should be a stand by rescue team so that we can immediately contact them if an emergency occurs into a confined space. It has a responsibility to to take attendance of confined space attendance who are working under confined space. These are some responsibilities.
[15:27]All right. Now let's talk about scaffolds. What are different types of scaffolds which are used at work sites? Different types of scaffolds are mobile scaffold, fixed scaffold, mobile elevating working platform scaffold. These are some scaffolds we use. What precautions should be taken when using an MWP? We need to ensure that since it is a movable working platform, uh its casters are in good order. Uh there is a locking patch in that as well so that we can lock when working on it. Uh there should not be missing guard rails or important materials, components of that platform, and it should be away like we have to maintain a safe distance from overhead power lines if it is available. It is mostly used uh inside a premise. So we need to ensure that it is safe for that. What are different tags which are used on scaffold and what are their meaning? There are three different tags used on a scaffold, green tag, which means the scaffold is safe to use. Red tag, which means the scaffold is unsafe. It has some damages or it has some missing parts. Yellow tag means the scaffold is under erection by certified scaffolders. If you were given responsibility to carry out a pre-use inspection of a scaffold, of a bird cage scaffold, fixed scaffold, what are the things you would check when getting out your inspection? I will check the type of soil where the scaffold has been erected. I will check it has to be a rocky soil, class A or class B soil. I will check that there is soleboard placed, there is soleplate on that for stability. I will check kick lift all the components are in good condition, standard post. There should be guard rails, mid rails and to boards. I will ensure that couplers have been used properly. We cannot use right angle coupler to fix three different components at different angles. So it should be used for for that. So ensure that couplers have been used properly for connecting different components of scaffold. Can anyone uh make small modifications in scaffold or is there an authorized person who should do all kind of modifications or erections? There should be an authorized person to do alterations and changes, modifications in a scaffold. And what is that person called? That person is called a certified scaffolder. Okay. Tell me uh like what are different frequencies on which scaffold is inspected? It should be inspected once a week. Or if the work activity is frequently being carried out upon the scaffold, then it should be inspected at least once prior to the work activity, visually to ensure that it's safe to use. Who carries out pre-use inspection of scaffold? It can be carried out by workers, by safety officers, by supervisors as well. So we train workers on how to inspect a scaffold before use so that they can ensure that it's safe for using. Mostly safety officers when they visit the work site for inspection or for observation, they need to visually inspect the scaffold before allowing workers to work on them. Okay. What are some common hazards associated with excavation work activity? Excavation has two types if it is trench, so it has some hazards. If the trench is more than 1.2 meters deep, so it can be as dangerous as a confined space. It can has a hazard of collapse of soil cave-in. There might be some underground utilities. electrical cables or different types of pipes. So it could cause engulfment, flood or electric shock. These are some hazards. What control measures are recommended for safe work in excavation? For excavation, we need to barricade the area. And we need to use different types of protective systems to prevent cave-in if trench is the excavation. And we need to hire trained workers for that. We need to use excavator, which is in good condition, which has third party inspection certificate. The operator should be trained. We need to maintain at least two meters of distance from the edge of the excavation, where we are using excavator. And if we identify underground utilities there, so we need to we need to use manual digging there and locate different types of utilities so that it can be prevented from getting damaged. All right. Uh what is cat? Cable avoidance tool? It is an equipment used to detect different buried underground tools before excavation. And when when is it used? It is used before excavation, and sometimes during excavation to detect the actual location of these utilities. All right. Uh what about inspections? What are different types of inspections? We carry out pre-inspection before the use of equipment. We carry out visual inspection where we visit the work site and just make sure that the equipment being used by workers are safe. We carry out ongoing inspection sometimes where the work is in progress and we visit the work site and see that the equipment is safe in order. All right. Define fire and explain the classes of fire. Fire is an exothermic reaction that takes place in the presence of oxygen, heat and fuel. Different classes of fire are class A fire, that is solid material, wood and paper, class B, liquid fire, uh diesel, petrol, class C gaseous fire, uh methane, butane, propane, class D fire, that would be magnesium, class F or K, cooking oil or animal fat. What is the best extinguishing media for extinguishing each class of fire? For each class of fire, the best extinguishing media would be dry chemical powder. Like for class A fire, what is the best extinguishing medium? For class A, water is the best extinguishing media because it is easily available and we extinguish fire, we we use water to extinguish such fire by using cooling method, where we decrease the temperature of the burning fuel, uh less than the incense temperature to extinguish the fire. For class B fire, uh we can use wet chemical. and for class C, we can use carbon dioxide. Since it's a gaseous fire, so it might be around that atmosphere. So we can use in that. For class D fire, we use special type of wet chemical because sometimes matters that we use at workplaces could be self-oxidizing. So if fire occurs in them, so it might produce oxygen, so we can't extinguish by using smothering or cooling method. So we use wet chemical to break down the chain reaction in such substances of fire. And for class D, we can use wet chemical or dry chemical powder.
[23:49]Explain what are portable fire fighting equipments and what are fixed fire fighting equipments? Portable fire fighting equipments are those that we can carry from one place to another. Examples would be fire extinguishers, uh fire blanket, fire beater. uh Fixed would be a dcher system, sprinkler system and hydrant systems. Can you explain the the the functionality of these fixed fire fighting appliances? Okay, so for hydrant system, we install an hydrant, uh that has a supply of water. Then we connect a hose into that, and then we can reach out to the area where the fire has occurred to extinguish the fire. We use sprinkler system in ceilings. It is mostly installed in storage areas where flammable materials and substances are being stored. So that if a fire occurs while there is no one present there, so sprinkler works as detecting the heat and releasing the water to extinguish the fire. We use drencher system, uh mostly on roofs. Uh if a fire spreads, then we can use that type of fire fighting equipment to extinguish the fire. Well, uh there are automatic fire fighting devices and there are manually operated fire fighting devices. Can you tell me where where automatic is required and where manual is required? So we can use automatic in situations where we are not present every time. That could be in storage areas. So we don't really frequently visit in storage areas unless we have a work. So in that situation, we can use automatic fire alarm systems, automatic detecting devices, that could be smoke detector or heat detector. For manually, we can use in such areas where we are present every time. We are doing our job, we are visiting that area every time. That could be uh a breaking uh breaking system of alarm system where we we can use a hammer. I've seen that a hammer that we used to break the alarm system to raise before alerting workers. Well, Mr., I'm very happy with your performance. Now shall we discuss the salary? How much salary are you expecting? Based upon your work experience and your qualifications that you have. So I expect for the time being 35k. 35k. So what was your last salary? Previous salary? It was 28. It was 28. And how many months or what was your work duration in that company? I worked for around one year. One year. All right. Your performance was good. Uh well we'll think about it and we'll let you know when you receive your offer letter. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir.
