HMB Safework

A mid-size UK manufacturer specialising in forged parts and industrial equipment had a safety management problem that was hiding in plain sight. Hazardous tasks were being assigned verbally, with no formal permit-to-work process in place. Near misses went unreported because the process involved filling in paper forms and walking them to the safety office. The HSE manager had no real-time view of what work was happening on the shop floor at any given moment. And the gap between supervisors, the HSE function, and company leadership meant that safety concerns raised on the floor rarely reached the people with authority to act on them. The company was operating in a genuinely high-risk environment without the infrastructure to manage that risk consistently.