The Health and Safety Executive has launched its annual competition to
generate ideas for health and safety research projects.
The competition has so far resulted in more than £5.8m of contracted
research being taken forward in the past two years.
Last year 61 organisations took part, submitting 164 proposals across 22
areas.
A total of 32 of these ideas are now under contract negotiation, with four
actually awarded contracts.
The competition will give a "high priority" to collaborative
projects, said the HSE, with the deadline for entries set at 12 noon on May 16.
The four ideas where contracts have been awarded included one for aerospace
and defence group BAE Systems Defence Consultancy, looking into human factors
affecting health and safety in the onshore and offshore hazardous industries.
Others were looking at improving standards and the optimisation of
"roll-over" protection in workplace vehicles, the measurement and
control of noise exposure from headsets and the impact of exposure to chemicals
on human health.
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Dr Paul Davies, the HSE’s chief scientist and director of the Hazardous
Installations Directorate, said, "The competition of ideas makes an
important contribution to advancing the frontiers of health and safety research
and technology."
