Blog

I have just finished updating the front page of my website. I hope you agree, its a lot shorter and that means you get to the goodies that much more quickly. Have a read. 

I mention individual core processes, and this will have rung a bell with my old ICI colleagues who went through the Staff Development Programme "Course on Raising Personal Effectiveness". We all came back bemused for a while, but as it sank in, I am sure we were all changed in some way. I know I was. Many people suddenly realised that the job they were doing, the life they were living wasn't the one they really wanted - and they made the changes necessary to realise their dreams.

It is the mark of just how good ICI was at managing its staff to develop in practical, real ways that even such radical changes were embraced and nurtured. I can't see that happening these days, can you?

By the way,  can you guess what my core process was? Send me an email with your best guess, maybe next month I will give you all a "Doooooh!" moment  by publishing it here. You will recognise it as me!

By Professor Ragnar E Löfstedt November 2011

This excellent report makes some very common sense (Yes, I know common sense is becoming an endangered species!) recommendations that I hope our illustrious leaders will act on quickly. I was especially pleased to read that  the concept of "as far as reasonably practicable" should be strengthened, which together with a recommendation that HSE assume control of all local authority Inspections and Enforcement, should go a long way to reducing the jobsworth culture that has so threatened the application of sensible Health and Safety controls.

The full report can be found here 

Key recommendations. 

•   Exempting from health and safety law those self-employed whose work activities pose no potential risk of harm to others.  

•   That HSE should review all its ACoPs. The initial phase of the review should be  completed by June 2012 so businesses have certainty about what is planned and when changes can be anticipated. 

•   That HSE undertakes a programme of sector-specific consolidations to be completed by April 2015. 

•   That legislation is changed to give HSE the authority to direct all local authority health and safety inspection and enforcement activity, in order to ensure that it is consistent and targeted towards the most risky workplaces. 

•   That the original intention of the pre-action protocol standard disclosure list is clarified and restated and that regulatory provisions that impose strict liability should be reviewed by June 2013 and either qualified with ‘reasonably practicable’ where strict liability is not absolutely necessary or amended to prevent civil liability from attaching to a breach of those provisions.

The Health and Safety of our workforce is too important to be left to the risk phobics who then extend sensible precautions and regulation well beyond what was ever intended or where it continues to have any sensible relevance. 

Over the last 20 years I have seen too many great ideas and new products end up in the waste bin because some fairly basic steps in market definition were missed or the answers assumed.   In the majority of these cases, the starting point was a new idea or application of an existing technology driven from the wrong starting point (what we can do) rather than by the real needs of the intended market (what we need). It is all too easy, and far too dangerous to assume that because you can build a product somebody will want to buy it.

TBD Presentations has considerable experience in the independent assessment of target market sectors on behalf of our clients. We have the clear advantage that we do not have an existing agenda or bias within the evaluation process, which allows us to offer impartial opinion for you to follow - or to ignore!

Contact me to learn more about what we can do for you

Control Sistem (Italy) were delighted, but not too surprised, when they recently received confirmation from TÜV Nord that their PSS-2 and Micro-PSS have been found to meet the performance criteria set out in

• EU Directives 88/77/EEC, 
• 2005/55/EC, 
• ECE regulation No. 49,
• Global Technical Requirement No. 4
• ECE Regulation No. 96,
• Directive 97/68/EC,
• ISO 16183, ISO 1178-1 and -11 and
• US CFR Part 1065, 

All as amended into current form, legislation and requirements.

The PSS-2 and Micro PSS are partial flow sampling and dilution systems designed to make the very best use of recent developments in flow control and feedback systems to permit the collection of truly representative mass-based particulate emission concentrations and rates.  The Micro-PSS is optimised for PEMS Applications whilst the PSS-20 is more suited to test cell development, homolugation and validation testing. Between the two units you can cover both ends of the automative emissions cycle; development and through-life with the same cutting edge technology

Give me a call or drop me an email to find out more.