Safety and Vacuum Truck Pumping!

For the last few years, there has been an increasing demand for transportation solutions and a revolution of the usage of vacuum trucks. Industries big and small alike have determined that this complex piece of equipment is worth purchasing as it meets an expectation for increased profitability. In spite of the power of this truck, those who operate it without knowing about safe pumping operations may cost a company an expenditure of both time and money. Proper knowledge about operational safety and procedures while pumping are essential to accomplish each task more efficiently. Listed below is some helpful information regarding safety in vacuum truck pumping operations.

Safe Operating Procedures

Although it is said that employers are responsible for providing appropriate training, instruction, and supervision to all workers, this is useless unless every worker has their own personal sense of safety. These following procedures are everyones concern and responsibility:

Pre-work Meetings – Employers are usually responsible for conducting meetings at the beginning of each shift to discuss the hazards to be encountered at the job site. Adequate information should be provided about the risk of harmful and toxic gas during operations; instructions should also be included on what to do if exposed to a toxic gas release.

Protective Equipment Training – Workers should be provided with proper personal protective apparatus as well as training on how to use this protective gear. Safety apparatus includes personal alarms, H2S, and respirators. All employees should receive an orientation about site-specific hazards.

Work site and Equipment Inspection It is imperative that inspections be conducted on both the job site and all of the equipment before starting any daily tasks. Monitoring air quality at the job site should be continuous and access to first aid should be readily available. Double check the instructions provided by the vehicles manufacturer to confirm that the truck is designed for the particular material being handled. Part of the daily inspection should ensure that every component of the vacuum truck, including the tank and pumping apparatus, is in good and safe working condition.

Proper Pumping for Septic Services

Septic services are one of the most common pumping tasks. It is important to know the step-by-step process involved in order to properly perform such services.

Muck Rake – During a sludge removal operation, do not just set the hose inside the septic tank. Instead, first use the muck rake to stir the sludge on the tank bottom. Spending a few minutes stirring breaks up the sludge and greatly aids in making the material easier to pump.

Vacuum Hose The vacuum line or hose can be inserted when the muck rake is in place. The pumping operation can then be started. A worker should continuously move both the hose and muck rake during the operation to break up any material and mixing it with the waste water as this permits easy removal.

Understanding The 4 Most Common Responses To Change

In today’s fast paced business world organisational change is becoming a consistent challenge. The reality is that change will always be here as it is a part of life. There is nothing that you can do to stop it. Many people and organisations try their best to avoid it or deny it but, eventually they will have to face it sooner or later.

Denying change can be very costly for an organisation as it can mean that your competitors can get a head of you and leave you behind. There is the temptation for managers to protect their staff from change knowing that it can affect them. However, putting off the inevitable can make the situation worse.

Effective managers understand that trying to fight and resist change is a waste of time, energy and resources. Effective managers embrace change and use it to the advantage of their staff and the organisation as a whole.

To be better prepared for change you need to be aware and understand the 4 common responses to change as follows:

Denial

The natural human response to change is denial because it is the most convenient and least painful response. When new proposals for change are put forward there instant reaction is to say that it will not work and it is a complete waste of time. Why fix a thing when it is not broken. People can blinker change out and pretend that it is not happening. This blinkered outlook is a classic denial response.

Resistance

When change becomes more of a reality than just an idea people’s responses will move from one of denial to resistance. This is also a natural human reaction to change and is nothing to be alarmed about. The key thing at the resistance stage is not to allow it to become deep seated. As a manager you must work with your staff to ensure the resistance is short lived.

Realisation

To move people towards acceptance it is important to communicate to staff of the benefits that will come with change. Also, emphasize that not changing will create risk and uncertainty in the future. Other things to point out is that the change maybe painful at the start however, in the long term it will make their jobs easier and more productive. At this stage people begin to realise the need for change.

Acceptance

The last phase is the acceptance of change. At this point you, your staff and the organisation have seen the light and have embraced the concept of change.

UK Self Storage Investment an Ideal high yield investment

UK Self Storage Investment is the first investment currently available in the UK allowing very low cost entry into the high return self storage industry. It’s a fact the UK’s top self storage companies have seen the highest growth and the highest yielding returns within the commercial property sector over the last couple of decades.

As the UK self storage industry continues to post remarkably resilient turnover figures and high profits, Many top UK Investment companies are now offering small time investors a chance to get in on the act with the first fully SIPP and HMRC approved affordable self storage commercial property investment to be released into the UK Investment market to date.

For an nominal investment of just 3,750 ( Up to 30,000 can be invested with the larger storage companies who have larger units), you can buy a complete unit in a Uk based self storage facility ranging in size from 25 square feet up to 200 square feet. This is then fully managed on your behalf by a professional management company usually on a 5 or 6 year lease, although the investment can cash in and be sold on during this period. The idea is that you invest in the unit itself, and then the management company does all the business of on site management, maintenance, cleaning etc and also the letting out ofthe unit to storage clients and you just get your monthly income out of the profits.

The beauty of this short term investment is that Investors actually buy a real bricks and mortar unit and not a small proportion of the whole self storage facility. The agreement with the facility management operates rather like an apartment you rent or own placed in the hands of a letting agency or property management company who fully managed the unit on the investors behalf, full management fees are payable only when the unit is occupied and yielding a rental income, and not when it is empty earning nothing.

For investors who wish to sell up early and get hold of their funds quickly there is a ‘defined exit strategy’, offering a variety of opt out possibilities, including guaranteed buyback, and the marketing and selling on of the unit to other interested investors and because these storage units are classified as commercial assets, they fall under the investments that can be brought into a SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension).

This is a win, win situation for investors of all levels as they can Invest using either existing savings an existing SIPP or even Frozen, Dormant or Existing Personal Pension Funds. Self Storage is currently the highest yielding investment product in the commercial property market it is Fully HMRC and SIPP approved with a Guaranteed Return and a Low entry point so even people with minimal funds to invest can get in on the act so to speak

UK Self Storage Investment is a Tangible investment with full title deeds an excellent rate of return via rental income (exceeds most traditional pension products and investments) with appreciating asset in a high and growing demand market area. Modular investment that can be tailored to clients available budget

How Business Leadership Skills and Business Management Training Can Help You Run a Thriving Company

Business management training is crucial for the success of any business. The question is: what are the essential qualities of a great leader or manager? A great leader must be able to communicate effectively, motivate their employees and work as part of a team. An effective manager must delegate responsibilities, set goals for his or her employees and be a good mentor. These qualities can be achieved by getting a business leadership skills certificate.

One important quality that good leaders and managers have in common is the ability to communicate effectively. How do we define proper communication? Accurately conveying ideas to employees and helping them understand and execute short-term as well as long-term goals are among the most important elements of proper communication. Often, employees do not understand the reasons behind the tasks assigned. Communicating the importance of these tasks can only improve results. Communicating effectively is also fundamental to successful problem solving. When an employee is dealing with an unfamiliar scenario, proper communication skills will allow the manager or leader to describe the pros and cons of the situation in order for his or her employees to make a well-informed decision. It will also teach him or her the proper protocol for that given situation for future reference. p;

Keeping employees motivated in the workplace will also lead to a better overall job performance. Without motivation, employees tend to complete far fewer tasks. In the past, effective discipline was used to force employees to complete tasks. This method, however, is only a short-term solution. By incorporating discipline, employees will finish tasks based on fear, eventually becoming tired of the ill treatment, and failing to see the overarching goal. On the contrary, motivators such as positive reinforcement and fair treatment will result in employee satisfaction. Monetary rewards aren’t the only way to reward employees for their hard work. The easiest way to recognize a job well done is by saying -thank you.- Proper motivational methodology is best learned through business management training where one can obtain a business leadership skills certificate.

A great leader must also be able to work as part of a team. Being able to communicate your ideas effectively is not enough if you are unable or unwilling to listen. Leaders must be equally as willing to teach and to learn from their employees. Empowerment as a motivator is very effective. When employees feel as if their voice matters and has a say, they become emotionally invested in the job, and want to complete tasks and do well.

Part of business management training includes the ability to delegate responsibilities. It is important to know your employees’ weaknesses and strengths and allow them to develop their own work processes. Setting goals is essential because it will keep employees focused on their individual goals as well as the overall company goals. By setting goals they will also understand how their tasks will impact the company as a whole and they will know that their work is valuable. Courses in business management training will teach leaders how to set accurate and motivational goals.

One of the best ways that a leader can contribute to their company is by acting as a good mentor. Sharing experiences and knowledge with employees will allow them to grow within the company and to value being a part of your organization while contributing to a thriving business. By getting a business leadership skills certificate and understanding the essentials of becoming a successful leader through business management training, the company will grow more rapidly and become more a more desirable place to work.

Sharepoint Document Collaboration Via Sharepoint Intranets

Custom SharePoint Designs & a well thought out SharePoint Branding effort ensures that prospects, customers, partners and vendors are always encountering the exact same corporate identity on SharePoint Websites, SharePoint Extranets & any SharePoint portals that they might have access to.

Document Collaboration via SharePoint Intranets & SharePoint Extranets

In todays work environment thats highly connected, documents created and used by multiple users, editors, and stakeholders are becoming the rule, rather than the exception. If your business needs to ensure easy channels of communication and collaboration between end-users but reduce the responsibility on administration required to support it, a SharePoint Server 2010 implementation is ideal. With the implementation, you achieve the co-authoring functionality of Microsoft Office 2010 with Microsoft Word 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, as well as Microsoft OneNote 2010 documents on SharePoint Server 2010.

Thanks to co-authoring, collaboration of server-based documents becomes easy and your business overheads, which were earlier linked to traditional document sharing via attachments, decrease. So, if your business needs multiple users to work on the same document, you can now ensure that work is done productively without any user intruding on anothers work or locking the others out. You wont need any additional server setup to use this functionality as it is the default state for data stored in SharePoint Server 2010 implementation. Whats more, administrators can manage the sharing and collaboration functionality with the use of same tools and technologies that they have already used to manage SharePoint. This way, not much impact would be there when you decide to use SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint Portals for Project Management

Your business has got a lot of information scattered everywhere in the form of spreadsheets, documents, e-mails, presentations, and more. Most of the data is usually stored on different computers and at different locations, making it difficult to manage the same. However, with the enhanced document and record management capabilities of the SharePoint 2010 implementation, you can now manage your projects and data effectively.

SharePoint 2010 implementation allows users to put related document sets, create business specific workflows, metadata, homepage and archiving processes. So, whether your business need to manage rigid processes like regulatory submissions or deal with informal process management where teams have to merge several file types in same process, you can do all that with SharePoint 2010.

Some other features of SharePoint 2010 that will help you manage your projects include allotment of unique document id to files that make it easy to search them, easy process to rate and add notes to documents, defining rules on a folder for further routing of the document, and usage of metadata by combining structured taxonomies and keywords, among others.

Dashboards & Reports

Thanks to SharePoint 2010, you can create rich, context-driven dashboards that help you to put data and content at a place, and get an overall view of your business performance at all levels. In other words, creating business intelligence dashboards and publishing them is an easy task in SharePoint 2010 environment. You can use the Dashboard Designer, which can be launched directly from the browser, and use it to create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), reports, scorecards, analytic charts and grids, filters, and dashboards.

Business Process Optimization

SharePoint 2010 has a new service architecture, multi-tenant features, and other improvements that have made it capable of handling larger volumes of content and an increased number of users as compared to its earlier version. You can reduce downtime by using its enhanced recovery and backup utilities as well as its improved support for high-availability features of SQL Server. You can analyze feature usage and find misconfigurations and other problems with the help of improved logging and log analysis tools. The considerably expanded PowerShell interface will help your business handle most administrative procedures, which in turn would encourage standardization and efficiency.

Converge Point (www.convergepoint.com) is a leading SharePoint consulting firm focused solely on SharePoint and InfoPath technologies. Our expert SharePoint consultants help organizations achieve their financial and business objectives by effective using Sharepoint implementations, SharePoint branding, Sharepoint Intranets