final-report-of-the-advisory-committee-on-falsework-bragg-report - Flipbook - Page 91
mittee. It is to be hoped that the two bodies have been
thinking along the same lines. We also hope that the
more technical matters which this committee has discussed, but on which it has not made quantitative
judgments, will receive detailed treatment in the code
produced under the auspices of the British Standards
Institution.
Note of thanks
The work of this Committee has been sponsored by
the Department of Employment and the Department
of the Environment and we wish to acknowledge the
help which we have received. We are indebted to
several Divisions of the Department of Employment
whose premises have been used for our meetings and to
the Health and Safety Executive whose staff has been
mainly responsible for the organisation and the running of our affairs. We are also particularly indebted
to HM Chief Inspector of Factories for allowing
members of the Construction Engineering Section to
give evidence on four separate occasions providing
information drawn from their extensive experience in
the investigation of falsework failures.
We wish to express our appreciation to the Overseas
Division of the Department of Employment for its
good offices in approaching overseas embassies to
obtain literature on falsework on a world-wide basis.
We are grateful to the Department of the Environment for providing detailed information at an early
stage on the latest practice and procedure in bridge
construction in England and Wales.
We wish to express our gratitude to HM Factory
Inspectorate for providing the secretariat which has
been responsible for obtaining, processing and handling all the papers, letters and correspondence which
were the raw material on which the committee's work
was based. Members of the committee would like
to record their particular appreciation of the work of
their Secretary, who, helped by his assistants, has
dedicated himself to serving the committee for such a
long period. We also wish to express our gratitude
to the staff now of the Health and Safety Executive
who contributed to the organisation of the work and
the preparation of the report.
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We are greatly indebted to the learned societies and
professional Associations, Institutes and Institutions.
They provided carefully prepared written statements
based on the considered experience of members who
have given much of their professional life to the study
of- construction problems. They presented their
evidence through some of their most senior members
as well as through officers expert in technical and
legal matters. Not only were these persons prepared to
discuss their views fully and frankly but they were also
kind enough to correct the verbatim transcripts and
indeed to add further points which had occurred to
them afterwards.
We wish to express our appreciation for the most
comprehensive and well-argued case which the TUC
prepared in written evidence and for the presentation
of this case by a most experienced and knowledgable
team. The Employers' Associations in the civil engineering and building sectors of the industry gave us
most valuable evidence on the implications of our
recommendations, on their impact on the industry
and on how the procedures could be implemented.
Those who represented safety organisations gave us
a very clear picture of the state of safety training
including, in all frankness, the inadequacies which the
present organisation seems to force on them.
We have been particularly appreciative of the number
of independent persons with a special interest in
falsework and safety who have taken the trouble to
write and give us the benefit of their experience.
Letters from consulting engineers, architects, contractors' engineers, research workers, university departments of engineering and many more have added
information, emphasis and colour to the formal
nature of the evidence we received during our meetings.
Some letters have laid special emphasis on particular
points of technology, procedure or research and we
hope we have covered them adequately in the report.
Our task has been made easier by the desire of all
concerned to make a positive contribution to our
enquiry. We believe that having been helped by this
goodwill, we can now make recommendations which
are realistic and which will make a material contribution to the safety of falsework.
