Technology and the internet are making the workplace more complex. However, they are helping to create safer working environments too. Jon Herbert looks at how the increasing availability of data is making its intelligent mark. Workplaces that until quite recently were essentially manual are now becoming data-rich environments. The pressures to put vast amounts of   Read More …

Forget images of smog-wrapped Beijing as the symbol of airborne threats of urban living. London has been warned to stop dragging its feet over air quality. But the Government has reacted quickly to carbon dangers with a new zero emissions target. Jon Herbert looks at the breath of life. It is difficult to avoid the   Read More …

Encouraging more innovation, productivity and growth, while increasing ownership and performance levels within a more efficient health and safety system, are goals for the Health and Safety Executive in its new five-year strategy. Jon Herbert looks at the path to 2020. Health and safety management across Britain has improved continuously decade-on-decade. Now it is time   Read More …

The North Sea’s high vulnerability to low oil prices is putting platforms and livelihoods at risk. However, wringing out every economic drop, stepping up the search for replacement reserves and exporting the UK’s depleted well decommissioning expertise are key to the Government’s secure energy strategy. Jon Herbert looks at ideas that could draw in small   Read More …

Recent UK flooding has highlighted the steps companies need to take before, during and after disasters strike to protect their staff, property, reputation and avoid legal wrangles. Jon Herbert reports. Britain’s continuing spate of very heavy rain storms is proof that devastating weather events can and do occur. Why, when, where and how often is   Read More …

Time to think ahead. By mid-summer 2016, the Government must outline the role UK businesses and homes will play at the halfway point to meeting binding 80% carbon reduction targets in 2050. Several pieces of the fifth carbon budget are still missing. Jon Herbert looks at what has become a bumpy journey. Are you planning   Read More …

Apps are not exclusive to mobile phones. Digital monitoring, control, performance improvement, ideas-sharing and communication is revolutionising the industrial environment and helping to turn the tables on environmental impacts and low productivity. Jon Herbert reports. Technology isn’t just transforming personal and social communications. Similar forces are changing the way in which industrial plants, manufacturing sites   Read More …

What will energy mean to us the day after tomorrow? Jon Herbert ponders on what may lie ahead. Hopefully, whenever we flick a switch in the future, the lights will come on. However, behind the switch-plate almost everything will have changed — through the grid to the power plant and onwards back to the original   Read More …

The accidental detonation of vapour from some 300 tonnes of leaked petrol at the Herefordshire Oil Storage Terminal was the largest land-based non-nuclear explosion since the Second World War. Jon Herbert looks at a new report examining how continuous safety improvements have helped turn good practice into common practice. The extent of the Buncefield oil   Read More …

Is the climate change prediction of more frequent warm and wet winters becoming an early UK reality? If so, what can be done and what would be the true cost of building resilience into the national infrastructure? Jon Herbert looks at a soggy mess. If a single phenomenon unites the often disunited United Kingdom, it   Read More …