Comments

  • Location or Role based Safety Committees?
    How geographically seperated are the sites?
    At a previous employerer we implemented a H&S super-committee, which had oversight of the site H&S committees and helped provide both guidence and consistancy. The site chairs and respective mgrs attended the oversight committee, which all risk registers etc funneled into - this decreased the difference in subjectivity of risk.
    We found that there were still true site-specific differences in both risk and approach that needed to be taken into account.
  • EROAD Rewards and accuracy
    Thanks Matt, i am aware of the full quote.
    It was used in the context of the Police expectation to use the data as evidence (a current or previous pattern of speeding by the individual before the single vehicle accident - and then build a case that we had given tacit approval for workers to speed by being aware that they were breaking the law but not taking action.
    (If you have a GPS is it 'resonablably practicable' to monitor speeding infringements).
  • EROAD Rewards and accuracy
    Yes, but remember the expression'what can be measured, can be managed'

    Having had company vehicles involved in crashes (our fleet of 60 vehicles does 1 million km per year) where the Police asked if we had GPS tracking, and then requested the data as part of thier crash investigation does tend to focus one's attention on driving pattern of behavior.

    We identified the 'at risk' drivers and first had a non-judgemental conversation about safety expectations (which worked for the majority), if behavior did not improve then it was passed onto HR for our performance management process (less than a handful of individuals).
  • Health and Safety Meetings
    Section 29 of the Health and Safety at Work (Worker Engagement, Participation and Representation) Regulations 2016 states:
    A health and safety committee must meet—
    (a) regularly at the times agreed by the members of the committee, but at least once every 3 months; and
    (b) at any other reasonable time on the request of a simple majority of members of the committee.

    Obviously this is the minimum legal requirement, your company may have a Collective Employment Agreement, H&S Committee Charter or similar which states how often over and above the legal minumum.
  • EROAD Rewards and accuracy

    Good to know it wasn't just us, hope they have fixed it by now.
  • EROAD Rewards and accuracy
    My present company doesn't use EROAD so this is nearly 5 years ago:

    We had problems with the accuracy of the posted speed limits - often EROAD would red-flag a vehicle at the same place repeatedly, but a site visit would show discrepency either with the actual posted speed, or when that speed zone started.

    We also had issues with the metric regarding unproductive idling on the side of the road - in our industry it means the HIABs and EWPs are operating!
  • H&S research
    Bio-medical effects of cumulative fatigue in those on-call (especially how much thier subsequent descision making is impacted).
  • Assessing Competency of New Employees
    Chrissy
    Why are you treating qualified hires any differently from those you train up?
    If you are not using the same competency framework for new workers; Use your JSA/SWMS/SOP/XYZ ancronym as a basis for assessing that the worker is competent in using the tool - to your level of safety (not previous bad habits).
    you will need to apportion time for a designated assessor to be on site with them.

    Our workers are all EWRB qualified, but we have additional industry and company competencies they must pass before they can work unsupervised. And they all undertake refreshers every 2 years
  • Safety Shoes
    We are the same as @Amber van Polanen - not all feet are the same fit, so we need to have options.
    (due to industry rules there are some shoes/boots that are not acceptable for our use).

    Safety footwear is costly to recycle (have we thought about how we sanitise them to remove biological hazards such as keratolysis, tinea, warts etc?) compared to buying new.
  • Query on Omicron and WorkSafe Notification
    Hi Andy

    Going back to first principles, it would depend on two factors:
    1. if Covid infection is a notifiable illness as defined in Section 23 of HAWSA (which covers seriousness).
    2. if the possibility of infection at the workplace is significantly higher than the possibilty of infection in the community - and how this could be proven?

    S.
  • Omicron's impact on injuries
    Our industry undertakes annual benchmarking, so far we have seen a rise in LTIFR across the board.
    At present we don't know if this is because:
    • Staff are distracted from their primary safety focus by covid protocols, or are mentally fatigued by the constant messaging.
    • Companies have not adjusted for significantly less hours worked due to lock downs.
    • Other factors.
  • Rapid Antigen Test kits
    Being that the Government 'consolidated' all test kits in the country, you might be out of luck:
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/government-should-prove-it-is-telling-the-truth-about-rapid-antigen-test-supplies-says-testing-provider/YWFFY232J7XIC3RPWJIY5Y3J5U/

    All suppliers I talk with have said March.
  • The Privacy Act - a Vacuum of Understanding


    Hi Matt,
    No we are not contracted to, engaged by, or working for the PCBU as we are a monopoly utility provider.(But I agree that it may be different if we were!)
  • The Privacy Act - a Vacuum of Understanding

    We have had the same requests, however my workers are not coved by the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Order 2021, as they do not fall into this category:
    7.2 Workers who carry out work where health services are provided to members of the public by 1 or more health practitioners and whose role involves being within 2 metres or less of a health practitioner or a member of the public for a period of 15 minutes or more

    My concern is the scattergun effect of health providers who are sending out blanket statements without looking at the coverage.
  • High potential consequence events (HIPO)
    Hi Sarah

    Our industry tends to look at High Impact Low Probability (HILP) events, of which there is a wealth of literature. For high hazard industries HILP focuses on catastrophic events (multiple fatalities).

    You are on the right track - I'm reassured by the fact that you have used the word realistic as in my experience HILP pushback conversations tend be dramatic and unrealistic (such as Godzilla attacks etc) or of a magnitude that would never be able to be handled by any in-house contingency planning (complete failure of regional electricity infrastructure).
  • SSSP - Have we lost our way

    Robb you absolutely nailed it with "SITE SPECIFIC"
  • Lone Worker Devices

    Thanks Petra, I was responding to Michael Wilson's comment about cellphones.
    We can't use cellphones due to the coverage limitations, so our remote and isolated workers have an application that works in conjunction with GPS tracking on their RT's (we have our own RT network).
  • Lone Worker Devices
    @Michael Wilson
    45% of our operational area is not within cellphone coverage. Maybe they are in a similar situation?
  • vehicle incident form
    Hi Rebecca

    we had our own forms, but recently changed insurer - we now use theirs (otherwise we ended up duplicating the info anyway).
    You could talk to your insurer and see f they have a standard template?
  • SOPs and Competency Assessments
    "Even if the exact order of the steps doesn't have any safety implications, carrying them out in the same order every time ensures that nothing gets missed".
    I agree totally - my comment above was about SOPs without safety 'why's.
    The problem is those un-enlightened ones who audit (and eventually prosecute) us, seem to believe that if you don't follow an SOP sequence explicitly, then you are not doing it safely.

    However, some things have to be in logical progression - in aviation one tends to rotate off the runway before raising the undercarriage!