A company based in Hereford which manufactures rubber sealants has been fined after a worker contracted allergic contact dermatitis. Hereford Magistrates’ Court heard how an employee contracted the skin disease after being exposed to sensitising ingredients in rubber compounds. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that the company failed to assess risks from products used or manage those risks. The company’s health and safety advisor failed to understand the underlying issues to the level required for the company to understand its responsibilities. TRP Polymer Solutions Limited, of Netherwood Road, Rotherwas Industrial Estate, Hereford, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, and Regulations 6 and 11 of the Control of Substances hazardous to Health 2002 (COSHH), and was fined £40,000 and ordered to pay costs of £6,529. Paula Underwood, of Slaughter Castle, Kimbolton, Leominster, Herefordshire, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3(2) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, and was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay costs of £200. For further information on COSHH visit: http://www.hse.gov.uk/toolbox/harmful/coshh.htm Notes to Editors: The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice, promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice, and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk  More about the legislation referred to in this case can be found at: www.legislation.gov.uk/   HSE news releases are available at http://press.hse.gov.uk   Journalists should approach HSE press office with any queries on regional press releases. Source link

Category: Construction Industry Today | Subscribe to Construction Industry Today Feed Published Fri, Apr 29th 2016 Professional lawn and garden care services offer customised lawn care programs that take care of one’s particular requirements. Posted via Industry Today. Follow us on Twitter @IndustryToday The appearance of your home is improved with a well-kept garden and lawn. But a well-manicured outdoor space can be a difficult goal to achieve especially if finding time for your garden is a daily struggle with a busy schedule. Most folks therefore prefer to hire professional services for garden maintenance and lawn care so that it remains in good shape all through the year. Professional lawn and garden care services offer customised lawn care programs that take care of your particular requirements. For example, your long neglected lawn requires more time and work to get back into shape. There’s cutting of the grass, pulling out weeds, aerating the lawn and fertilising it which means the lawn care service needs to spend more time and effort. So, you need a customised lawn care program that will include all services. On the other hand, if your lawn just needs mowing and trimming at the edges, you might need the lawn care professionals to come out and do these jobs twice or thrice a month. This ensures that your outdoor space is always looking good. Let’s take a look at some of the other benefits of having customised lawn care programs. 1 Lawn care professionals know their job, they can advise you on how best to maintain your outdoor space. Selecting the right grass for your yard, the fertilisers to be used, the right time to fertilise, how to control weed growth, mowing techniques, etc., these are some of the things that lawn care professionals specialise in. By getting a customised lawn care program for your yard, you get the benefit of this expertise which helps in improving your outdoor space. 2 You don’t need to invest in expensive gardening equipment like motorised lawn mowers and spend more on the maintenance and storage. The lawn care company takes care of this for you. 3 With customised Mowing Franchise programs you can rest easy in the knowledge that your yard will always be tended to; you don’t need to set aside time to mow the lawn or prune the hedges, it will all be attended to as per the terms of the service contract with the lawn and garden care company. If you are looking for a customised lawn care program, you must search for a service provider locally. The advantage of getting a local lawn mowing service to maintain your yard is that they are well-versed with the local climate and soil conditions and know exactly how to look after your garden and lawn. In Queensland, you have many options for garden care services. Fox Mowing is a lawn and garden care service that operates in different areas of Australia, including Queensland. Services offered include lawn mowing, garden maintenance Brisbane. Pruning, fertilising, weed control, pest control, etc. Visit http://foxmowingqld.com.au/ for more details and rates. Source link

Seadrill’s West Capricorn rig In the depths of the ocean off the coast of Uruguay, more than two miles below sea level, the oil industry is continuing to push back the frontier. Last month a drillship operated by AP Møller-Maersk of Denmark began the Raya 1 well in 3,411 metres of water, breaking the record for sea depth previously set in 2013. Drilling in such extreme conditions is a remarkable feat, but wells such as Raya 1 are becoming increasingly rare. Technology makes them possible, but economics militates against them. For the companies that operate offshore rigs on behalf of oil producers — including Transocean, Seadrill, Ensco and Noble Corp — the slump in crude prices since the summer of 2014 has been brutal. They have been reporting large losses, and have cut or scrapped their dividends. Their share prices have plunged. The impact of low oil prices is often depicted as a battle between Saudi Arabia and the onshore shale producers of the US. But other relatively high-cost sources of supply around the world have also been hit, and for offshore oil the effect is likely to last longer. The latest data for offshore oil and gas production still look healthy. Last year output from the UK sector of the North Sea rose 7 to 8 per cent, while crude production in the US waters of the Gulf of Mexico rose 10 per cent. That growth is the result of decisions taken years ago, however. Matt Cook of Douglas-Westwood, a consultancy, says that because offshore projects take years to develop, the impact of falling oil prices is felt only after a lag. “This hasn’t yet got as bad as it could well be,” he adds. “Some of the positive moves we have seen in drilling are the result of decisions that were committed to before the downturn. It’s quite possible that the worst is yet to come.” The number of drillships and “semi-submersible” floating rigs working around the world has dropped from 251 in September 2014 to 169 last month, according to the RigLogix database from Rigzone, a research firm. Only a handful of new offshore projects were given the green light last year, including Royal Dutch Shell’s Appomattox in the Gulf of Mexico, Eni’s OCTP off the coast of Ghana, and Statoil’s Johan Sverdrup field in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea. Even more ominously for the contractors, many oil producers have cut back sharply on exploration to find fields that will lead to future developments. ConocoPhillips of the US said last year it would pull out of deepwater exploration altogether by 2017. Paal Kibsgaard, chief executive of Schlumberger, the world’s largest oil services group, on Friday told analysts that its customers showed signs of “facing a full-scale cash crisis”, and in the second quarter their spending was likely to be even lower than in the first three months of 2016. One particular weak spot for Schlumberger was sales of offshore seismic survey data — essential for exploration — which Mr Kibsgaard said had fallen to “unprecedented low levels”. With cash flows under extreme pressure, and commitments to investors that dividends will not be cut, oil companies see little benefit in spending money on exploration that might at best pay off in production 10 years from now. The slowdown in both exploration for new fields and the development of past discoveries is causing particular difficulties for those rig operators that are heavily indebted. For example, Seadrill’s net debt was 4.7 times its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation in 2013, before oil prices slumped, and at the end of 2015 the company’s leverage had increased to 5.4 times. Noble and Transocean have had their credit ratings cut from investment grade to junk status as a result of the downturn. Jeremy Thigpen, the new chief executive of Transocean, stressed the company’s financial strength and its ability to ride out the downturn at a conference last month. But Transocean’s regular fleet status report last week showed that of its 28 rigs capable of working in “ultra deep” waters, just 12 were under contract, with the rest “stacked” or idle. Not every company is turning away from offshore oil and gas. Total is leading the Raya 1 project in Uruguay. Shell said the potential for growth in deep water off Brazil was a central reason for its £35bn takeover of BG Group. Although offshore and especially deepwater oil is expensive, the fields found can be very large. So the cost per barrel is not necessarily higher than for US shale, says Amrita Sen of Energy Aspects, a consultancy. The big difference, however, is in flexibility. Offshore, a well might cost $100m and take many weeks to drill, while onshore it will cost about $5m to $7m and take less than two weeks. That means shale operations can be adjusted quickly to respond to changing market conditions. If you commit to a big offshore project, you are pretty well stuck with it, even if falling commodity prices make it uneconomic. “The problem is not just that oil is at $45,” says Ms Sen. “It’s that you just can’t be certain of anything.” ExxonMobil told investors last month that it was pursuing “several” offshore development opportunities. However, executives also stressed the flexibility of its US onshore assets, which would allow them to ramp up production quickly if oil process rise. Mr Kibsgaard of Schlumberger suggested on Friday that this would be a common view across the industry. Large new offshore projects, he said, were “not going to be the first area that our customers are going to start putting money into“. When the recovery comes, he added, investment will pick up onshore first and offshore — and especially in deep water — only later. That means the financial pressures on the rig companies will continue, potentially with significant low-term consequences. Keeping a modern drillship “hot stacked” — ready to move off to a job if needed — can cost $150,000