Robert Merry, an independent stone consultant and project manager who ran his own company for 17 years and now also runs training courses on project management, gives his personal slant on the stone industry this month.

Hurricane Sandie struck the east coast of America and we held our breath. A natural disaster. Pictures of partially submerged cars piled scrap heap high on New York streets was comical and shocking.

My wife caught the last plane home from JFK on the Sunday night before the storm struck.

I saw pictures of streets on Staten Island with gaps where houses used to stand. People picking through the rubble of family possessions, hoping fine words of presidents and presidential candidates would materialise into help and relief.

The rumours that the local nuclear power station had been partially shut down after damage from the storm briefly became news and then we heard no more – a reminder of the terror of the melt down of the nuclear power station when another natural disaster hit Japan.

There was a desire to return to normality, such as letting the New York marathon go ahead. But it was cancelled at the last minute and the runners stayed away from those same houseless, Staten Island streets.

Our hearts go out to New Yorkers.

There was an unnatural disaster closer to home – the shake-up of Health & Safety legislation that affects all stone producers and contractors, as reported in Natural Stone Specialist in September.

It is to remove red tape and make life simpler. Simpler for what? For who? So it’s easier and quicker for us all to end up maimed or injured by poor practice?

The onus is now on the employee (the most vulnerable link in the chain) to prove negligence of the employer. A return to Victorian values, I fear. Is this going to be a ‘licence’ for employers to conveniently ignore the welfare of their employees and the public because the government says ‘it’s not really necessary?

The Association of British Insurers published Health and Safety for Business and the Voluntary Sector – Key Principles in November 2011 in response to Lord Young’s review of Health & Safety for the government. These principles included ‘commitment and leadership by senior management: competent assistance; a structured approach; and the completion of suitable and sufficient risk assessments’.

I suspect insurers will have the final say. As we all know, insurance premiums can go up as well as (never, ever) coming down. There can be no doubt that we will all end up paying for any relaxing of legislation that causes more risk to the insurers.

Another unnatural disaster: Those mad dogs in Government are now proposing a ‘wide-ranging review of Building Regulations to cut bureaucracy and boost house building’.

They want to make it easier to wear cowboy hats, strap on the riding chaps and hit a town near you. Up goes a nice little extension or garage without any of those nasty building surveyors checking it won’t fall down again or be blown over when the next hurricane reaches these shores.

The clue’s in the title. Regulation. We all dislike being told what to do and how to do it. And there is a secret part of us that likes the risk of operating on the edge of acceptability. But not when it comes to buildings and people’s safety.

Building Regulations work. If you visit the HMRC planning portal the regulations are set out. They are probably over long and wordy, but the reason we have such high quality buildings in this country is because we have a regulated construction industry. By dumbing down the regulations it will result in lower quality houses, built to poorer environmental (and every other) standards.

The clocks went back at the end of October but we have excellent Health & Safety legislation and we mustn’t turn the clock back on this.

Equally, if we turn the clock back on Building Regulations we run the risk of being like the man on the streets of New York, standing next to the space where his house used to be.

Robert Merry, MCIOB, ran his own stone company for 17 years and is now an independent Stone Consultant and Project Manager. He also delivers training programmes on all aspects of Estimating and Project Management – details and dates are on his website. Tel: 0207 502 6353 / 07771 997621