Worksafe provides very good guidance on what to look for in a surveyor. If they dont have P402 or IP402 and many years of experience (with examples of work) then there is a chance they dont have the required skill set to do the work. — Stuart Keer-Keer

Just want to highlight the experience part - and that it is in asbestos surveying/assesment in the same industry as you - I once saw a survey that claimed a set of brake disc that tested positive for asbestos was low risk because it was bonded into the brake material and in good condition...

My thoughts are sections 33 and 34 (overlapping duties and the duty to consult) would apply more to that type of situation.

No worries @Mhari Clark-McCall, and definitely agree not to name and shame publicly on the forum.

Hoping there are some others on the forum that can share opinions or insights into how they have dealt with similar situations also.

Roughly without getting to technical I would say that they could reasonably go down the route of "assuming asbestos is present" under Reg 10.2... but in doing so they have to treat it as if asbestos has been identified in the workplace (Reg 10.5). Regulation 10 is primarily about the identification of asbestos that may be a risk of exposure to respirable asbestos fibres...
However under Regulation 13 they have the duty to prepare a Asbestos Management Plan, and specifically Reg 13.4(b) they need to include in that plan the "decisions, and reasons for decisions, about the management of the risk arising from asbestos at the workplace" - this is where they need to get specific about the risk and why they are taking the actions they are taking (or not taking as may be the case).
And as you have said, to complete this they need to know the condition of the asbestos and the actual risk, if it is a generic plan that states management actions such as "ACM Firbelite board - seal and monitor condition" and it has not been sealed or the condition is poor then you could request that the plan is reviewed/revised under Regulation 14 as "the plan is no longer adequate for managing the risk arising from asbestos or ACM at the workplace".

The other gameplan is - as your company is also a PCBU with management or control of a workplace (specifically the area of the building you occupy) you could complete your own asbestos survey and Asbestos Management Plan. Obviously there will be areas that you cannot enter due to not having access from the landloard; swithcboards, lift shafts, etc. but here you can reasonably assume presence of ACMs (and you may need to undertake air monitoring/samples as a means to confirm the risk of respirable fibres). This will likely end you up in a similar place of debating with the landlord if work needs to be done or not, but you will have more evidence to back up your side of the argument (and you can also defend that you have done what is reasonably practical to manage the risk in the circumstances).

Basic example is while the Building Act is not specifically focused on the safety or health of the occupants of you breach that act by not building to code and it hurts someone you could be charged under HSWA.

Given this was published one year before the UK H&S at Work Act I would be interested in having a read...

Thanks Lee - I miss working with for an employer with a company wide subscription toe the AS Standards!

Thanks for the detail information Lee. Even when you said it was caused by adiabatic combustion I was still thinking but what was the fuel - shocked me when you said the regulator had aluminium parts.
Couple of questions that you might have more information on:

• Do you know what were the specific parts of the regulator that were aluminium?
• And is there any way to tell (even if you have to break them down to check)?
• Do you know if the Standard (AS 4267?) specifies brass only construction for Oxygen regulators, or does it allow using aluminium or other reactive metals?

Thanks again for sharing this.

One thing I would like to look into further is having effective worker participation in the management of safety in their workplaces without the need for the classical H&S Committee approach.

My initial thoughts are this would need to be part of a wider organisational change to H&S management including a company's leadership structure accepting to decentralise a lot more of the decision making processes (and in turn moving away from a classical management structure to a leadership structure). Part of this would be a revised way to look at risk assessment practices - where risk prompts (incidents, near misses, safety conversations, after action debriefs, etc.) can be used to trigger a variety of assessment method from the simply actioning a suggested improvement through to learning teams and/or ICAM investigations, or (as our current government loves) working groups for specific issues (which I guess are like learning teams on a much bigger scale).

In doing so my hope is that worker participation and engagement will be driven from a discussion of the opinions of a few towards the inclusion of the whole of the workforce.

Agree in principle we can move up the hierarchy when opportunities arise to improve, but "all we can do right now" sounds a bit sketchy! — Simon Lawrence

I agree that wasn't the best example (took it too far probably). To get a bit more confortable I guess it is usually more of a case of moveing from controlling the seveirty of an injury to preventing the injury from occuring in the first place (whether than it by preventing an incident outright or, more likely, preventing people coming into contact with an incident)

Some would argue "why stop there?" My answer is that interpretation of "Reasonably practicable", if applied properly, gets you to a perfectly good place. — Simon Lawrence

I agree with this completely - and my comment regarding "what is the best we can done" was meant in this context; i.e. "what is the best we can do with the resources we have available (and also without sacrificing something else more in the process). But I do think the process should start "at the top" (for want of a better description) - is there anything we can reasonably do to eliminate this risk? No... ok, lets move down to any reasonably available substitutions...

My suggestion is if we want managers to get to the optimum level in the hierarchy, instead of exhortations to be better just for the sake of it (they see right through that), we give them the whole story. And the whole story also says "Here's where you can stop, at least for now". — Simon Lawrence

"at least for now" brings in another good point - sometimes work needs to continue with what we have in hand while we wait for more complex solutions to the issues to progress. This is one reason why PPE and Admin controls are the typical solution - they are reasonably quick and simple to implement. Not very often do risk assessments look at the immediate, interim and long term solutions as a staged appraoch to manage risk - generally it is a single pass "what can/should we do (or have to do) right now to manage this risk"; we can't wait 3 months for the guards to be designed, fabricated and fitted - we need to protect our teams now... so make sure we have trained them and give them some good PPE as that is all we can do right now.

The main issue I have seen is the "risk based" approach being applied incorrectly - most systems are focused around a risk matrix and risk reduction to an acceptable level, rather than an actual focus on reasonably practicable controls. Simply put the focus of the former is "what is the minimum we need to do" while the later is "what is the best we can do".

The other issue is the complete misunderstanding of the "hierarchy of control" which could be down to the simplified version normally portrayed pictorially. And actually illustrated in this question itself - "How do we move up the hierarchy of control?" - this implies that the starting point is Admin controls and PPE, not what is actually required in the legislation to start at elimination and then move down if it is not reasonably practical:

30 Management of risks
(1) A duty imposed on a person by or under this Act requires the person—
(a) to eliminate risks to health and safety, so far as is reasonably practicable; and
(b) if it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate risks to health and safety, to minimise those risks so far as is reasonably practicable. — Health and Safety at Work Act

6 Hierarchy of control measures
(1) This regulation applies if it is not reasonably practicable for a PCBU to eliminate risks to health and safety in accordance with section 30(1)(a) of the Act.
(2) A PCBU must, to minimise risks to health and safety, implement control measures in accordance with this regulation.
(3) The PCBU must minimise risks to health and safety, so far as is reasonably practicable, by taking 1 or more of the following actions that is the most appropriate and effective taking into account the nature of the risk:
(a) substituting (wholly or partly) the hazard giving rise to the risk with something that gives rise to a lesser risk:
(b) isolating the hazard giving rise to the risk to prevent any person coming into contact with it:
(c) implementing engineering controls.
(4) If a risk then remains, the PCBU must minimise the remaining risk, so far as is reasonably practicable, by implementing administrative controls.
(5) If a risk then remains, the PCBU must minimise the remaining risk by ensuring the provision and use of suitable personal protective equipment. — HSWA General Risk, etc. Regs

There are other ways to identify deviance prone people in an organisation other than D&A testing that will not adversely affect people we want to keep and have the same effect (and it's probably cheaper). — Jon Harper-Slade

But the other ways are seen to take a lot more personal effort than just randomly asking someone to pee in a cup... and generally don't have as much visibility of effectiveness to senior management / boards as pinging a "deviant" druggie.

The unintended consequences is that the "good" people who do get hired can potentially just be "yes" conformist type people. Who are not necessarily innovators, risk takers or even thinkers - the type of people business needs to flourish. — Andrew

It makes me think that there is a good chance that those in leadership positions that are making the decisions to use random dug testing are themselves the "yes" conformist type people and are not necessarily innovators, risk takers or even thinkers - the type of people business needs to flourish.

What we need is the 2021 version of "walking a straight line test" — Andrew

Well there are apparently a few apps already available to stop you from making a fool of yourself by drunk-texting... I'm sure something could be adapted!

I'd be much more interested in "Impairment Testing" — Andrew

Agree with that - the results of the referdum / any law change will potentially cause some headaches for any companies with D&A testing process which are based on a "well it's illegal so you shouldn't be doing it" approach rather than actually considering if there is impairment or not.

Would be great if you could extend the conversation in the upcoming article to consider the other side of the discussion for getting rid of random testing completely... I assume it isn't likely as it is probably already out to print, but maybe a follow up counter-article in the Mar-Apr edition?

So why do we test for these when we know it is highly unlikely it will be a root cause? — Marie Fleming

And besides being under the influence of drugs/alcohol should never be considered the root cause of an incident anyway.

It is frustrating to say the least that the conversation is being had over "should we be able to randomly (without reason) test more people for drugs in our workplace" whilst most companies consider workplace stress / wellbeing to be one of their biggest "critical risks", yet do little more than try to identify and treat the symptoms once the damage has already started to be done.
Substance abuse is a common indication of potential deeper issues (stress / mental illness). It is disingenuous to talk about care for the wellbeing of your workers, whilst also considering how to weed out the drug taking trouble makers from your workforce.

Lets start actually doing something about improving the mental health and resilience of our workers (not just trying to bandage the symptoms with EAP and mental health first aid) by taking a look at what the actual stressors and issues in our workers lives are, and if our expectations/rules are adding to those unnecessarily.

Fair enough on the school's part, the situation is changing each day with new info.

One other point I thought of to consider is to potentially identify any high risk people in your organisation and consider if any proactive measures could be implemented around them - such as anyone who is pregnant or has a immunodeficiency, and how they could be at an increased risk e.g. contact with general public, etc.
While the risk is low at the moment with no suspected/confirmed case in NZ - a bit of planning around who would be on this list, or how you would quickly establish this list would be a positive step (and wouldn't necessarily be a waste of effort as it can be used for other infectious/pandemic cases such as a severe flu season).

There is nothing specific for Coronavirus as it isn't an issue for NZ at the moment. The seasonal flu will have a bigger impact so it would be more important to prepare for this. — Chris Anderson

While no case have been reported so far in NZ, there are now 5 confirmed cases in Australia - so it is not unlikely to be a potential issue here as well.
Given the incubation/infectious periods are much different to influenza an approach similar to measles may be more appropriate - e.g. identifying potentially infected people and apply quarantine periods (from the last potential infection contact) until no signs of infection is confirmed.
The hard part is knowing if someone has potentially been infected (and part of this is to get people to understand and think where they could of been infected) - again take measles as an example, commonly we see news regarding the discovery of a person infected with measles traveling by airplane and the call for anyone on the same flight to consider quarantining themselves from others that are at a high risk from a measles infection.

As for the original question, my suggestion would be to: provide employees with good information on how they can get infected, where they may have been infected and what to do if they think they may have been potentially exposed to an infected person. Where they may have been infected will initially be as the school have said so far - traveled to China or any of the affected countries, or who have been in contact with a person who has confirmed Coronavirus; but as more information comes to light updated to include travel on specific flight numbers etc.
If they think they might be infected - instructions to stay away from work, call in to discuss with management, and then plan for how to initially deal with potentially up to 2 weeks away from work while we wait to see. If they have come to work and potentially infected others this creates a bigger issue so at first the important thing is to get the info out there with the message that we'd rather a missed day or 2 while we check things out if we're not sure than to risk it and have to quarantine a much larger portion of staff.