A company I worked for was required to conduct a safety audit on all aspects relating to warehousing and machinery.
I was in charge of conducting the safety audit as I was the only one with high risk training and previous work in safety compliance
During the report, things were OK, although one component would have resulted in an automatic fail, which was the Forklift charger station. They were required to have a 3m or more clearance in all directions around the charger. The current warehouse layout had split systems and hit water units maybe 500mm from the forklift when charged. If there was a fire, the cardboard and Styrofoam packing would be able to spread it through the whole warehouse because it was against the back wall, a good 50m+ run of uninterrupted stock on racks upto 8m high.
I alerted management, who said they were aware but there weren't any quick fixes so the last guy who did them would just pass the audit and they told me to do the same.
I did pass the report, however placed in the comments the risk assessment and instructions from manager name here and went on with my day.
Thing is, it's a large company that will do anything to stay out of headlines so any risk assessments and failures are reviewed by head office directly.
A week later I'm getting nothing but daggers and cold shoulders from management, and it's announced the shop will be closed for 2 days to “install new racking” in the warehouse. Came back to work to see that we had a new layout for half the warehouse and surprise surprise, it was all the old racking still in use.
I was taken off safety duties, apparently the 2ic did the training required to conduct them for future audits