As a diver, when regulations began to be enforced more rigorously by the HSE in the 80's I and a lot of divers were skeptical and thought it was time wasting, and unnecessary and regarded it with a big ego and little true understanding as like all young guys we felt bullet proof. The companies (especially small inshore firms) had areas within which they fell short of the regulations, some turned a blind eye, others hid things, quite often the divers were complicit in this. As years passed a lot of these bad practices were dropped and it became unusual for a company to have bad kit or practices. When i did work for a "bad" company i would often bring my own hat or bailout system often selling it to the company when I left!! I once even brought an air panel to work!!Things got better in the UK and as i matured and gained experience I saw the value of regulations and codes of practice. As I moved into owning my own diving business, I took it as a point of pride to work towards having the best kit, systems and procedures that I could afford to buy or build, a slow process!!
Nowadays I Price a job based as much on having the right kit, right team, right procedures, with no corners cut. The Diving At Work Regulations ensure a relatively even playing field when tendering as "shortcuts" to lower the price are often against regulations and bearing in mind the regulations stipulations of the clients "duty of care" fewer "bad companies" benefit (but of course there are always the odd exceptions). To my mind this is the benefit of regulations, codes of practice, proper risk assessments etc. It brings safer dives, and everyone gets to go home!
My current area I'm working to improve is in the area of the standby diver, not only is he ready to go when needed (we already have that down well) but i am trying to educate my clients and teams that a safety exercise in diver casualty/ emergency recovery is included in a project plan & risk assessment and is repeatable with new team members, new site, changing conditions, new systems etc. I have had mixed success: the divers are happy to do it ( if paid) and some of the clients (enlightened ones) see the value of their compliance with duty of care and it does involve them in the project more (this has often been good for my business as the client knows I've got their back and we are reducing risk as much as possible.
Some clients are not keen to see it on their jobs but we turn up as a better team because of our ethos. It is better for my lads to turn up as a practiced, efficient team rather than a divided group of individuals chasing the day rate (and im willing to pay to get that!). Inexperience, economic fears, and peer pressure at all levels in clients, dive teams and company management cause small (and large) areas of cutting corners and unnecessary risk. But there is a different route, that just requires a clear focus on regulations ( or getting them), getting the right kit, team and procedures in place... then selling it to the client... not easy.... but not as hard as you would think.... certainly easier than explaining in a court to a judge and a grieving family WHY the diver died. All this is my own humble opinion and I accept eveyrone has a different situation and economy... whatever you do brothers do it as safe as you can...
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