Whose 'private property' and for what purpose? Is he driving for hire or reward? If so, follow this hierarchy of what would be considered 'reasonably practical':
1. Any applicable legislation or regulations
2. Any relevant industry standards
3. Any relevant codes of practice
4. Any WorkSafe NZ (or similar) Guidelines documents

Also important to conduct and document due diligence, appropriate risk assessment and work plans that consider all conditions / parameters of planned work, including:
- machinery and equipment to be used
- any / all other vehicles, machinery and equipment to be used in the same area
- site / environment conditions (ie different conditions on flat land compared to steep or hilly land, daylight vs nighttime, etc)
- people in the area doing work
- communication requirements for overlapping / interfacing work activities

It's time we developed more appropriate testing regimes to assess cognitive impairment, which is the real risk, rather than focusing entirely on presence / absence / legal limits. The same criteria should also be applied for prescription and over-the-counter medications that have the same potential for cognitive impairment yet are largely ignored in most testing regimes.

I'm sure there are already tried and proven frameworks for measuring cognitive impairment already used in research conducted for example by military personnel researching effects of hypoxia (I watched an example on the Vlog "Smarter Every Day) that could be readily adapted to workplace assessments, and most would typically have their own framework for classifying what is acceptable and what is not.

Cognitive impairment should be assessed for both mental impairment (i.e., reasoning, judgement and decision-making) and physical impairment (i.e., coordination and motor skills).

It's still too easy to give the right answers in theoretical questions typically posed for such qualifications - especially when people who have been schooled in traditional OHS dogmas and practice, on assessments based in the same frameworks and lacking sufficient grasp of meaningful competency frameworks (such as Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning), and still diverge completely from what really works for businesses in the real world. Even a simple review of the competency framework for Levels 5-6 in OHS shows significant gaps in meaningful business management and leadership skills yet the framework suggests people who have completed these levels would have the requisite skills to perform at an organisation-wide management level. They lack the people skills and strategic planning skills, and especially this training appears only to train them to perpetuate OHS frameworks that are demonstrably out of step with business needs. This is not only setting up everyone within this system for failure - both practitioners and businesses they work with - but also excluding people who are actively engaging with businesses, influencing change, doing their own independent / self-directed studies in a real world context, adapting and working out how best to achieve safe workplaces and still support businesses to thrive and adapt.

Articles in the recent Safeguard Magazine on Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) are particularly relevant to this discussion.

- yes. this is an interesting side conversation of the move to HASANZ. I personally know a few people who have completed a post-graduate diploma of occupational safety and health, who have by virtue of this qualification achieved Graduate member status in NZISM and would therefore be eligible for the HASANZ register, yet I know from personal experience that they do not have sugfficient depth of understanding, leadership skills, systems thinking or all the professionalism we would hope for from someone aiming to work as a consultant. These people would focus most on how much money they could get rather than on what was right for a client, and their need to be right and / or seen as 'expert' would see them impose bureaucratic systems that don't necessarily deliver required results.

I have even seen a consultant who had previously been a senior H&S manager attempt to deliver risk management training where he relied entirely on the text he had copied into his slides; when trainees asked questions, he just read the slide again - he clearly did not understand the content himself and had no business being in the front of the room trying to train others in it.

I also know a number of people who intuitively know how to go about this, don't over-rely on their qualifications or don't even have formal qualifications, who do their own thinking and problem-solving, make authentic connections with people and put the client's interests first. This latter way of going about their work is what HASANZ was intending but its over-emphasis on qualifications rather than skills, experience, personality traits and values seems to be taking it even further off the mark.

FYI - I have copied and pasted your request, posted as an article on my LinkedIn page and tagged you, then shared again in the NZISM LinkedIn Group. Good luck with your research - this is important work.

Genesis Energy used to have individual KPIs for reporting, including a minimum number of near miss incidents, and they could be from work or outside of work. As you might imagine, some people just took the p!ss and wrote nonsense like coming across a banana peel on the footpath when they went out to buy lunch, and a missing cloth from the kitchenette. While it would be good to aim for reporting all near miss incidents, a number of factors probably impact the effectiveness of doing so, including awareness / recognition of near miss events as they occur, attitude about having to report it and how easy / simple it is to do so, perceived value of reporting, etc. There is as much potential to learn from a good near miss report as from any other investigation findings, so most of this comes down to coaching, facilitating and leading a gradual movement toward consistent reporting.

The latest Safeguard Magazine included an excellent article based on a presentation at the Safeguard Conference, about the tendency of safety and other compliance disciplines to focus overly much on what is lacking rather than what is there. Most organisations these days are doing plenty of positive things toward ensuring a safe workplace, and it would be good to see them focusing on those in more visible ways, like signs and dashboards.

FYI - a related taxonomy system is Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy can be very helpful for identifying competency requirements to ensure learning design, training delivery and learner assessment actually deliver the level of competence required / expected.

Please count me in!

Well said.

As with so many issues, there isn't a single 'one size fits all answer'. It seems sensible that individuals should be discussing expectations and boundaries with their respective managers. If companies expect more from an individual than they think is reasonable, they have the option to discuss and negotiate, and if they can't agree, perhaps it's time to look elsewhere. If people feel they have no choice but to submit to demands imposed on them from further up the hierarchy, they would be better off to walk. Why allow unreasonable intrusion into your personal life then continue to be miserable and blame someone else?

There have now been at least 2 fatalities involving eScooters in USA. Does NZ really need to wait for its first fatalities to act??

Those signs send a mixed message about the aims of workplace safety and risk management. Not only is there an underlying suggestion that it's not OK to report, but somehow there is also an element of focusing overly much on failures rather than good work and contribution. They are helpful as a measure, but more useful in the background for managers to see what's happening.

- yes, and photos, vidos, etc are all records. Sometimes it is easier to take a photo of a whiteboard or other activities and save it with appropriate details to be able to find it.

The thing is that the documents are only relevant after the fact, to save someone's butt from legal action if there is an incident. Documents alone do not keep people safe. In addition, if the system behind the documents is flawed, no amount of documents, records and forms will stand up to scrutiny. Ultimately it's about establishing a clear purpose, a meaningful safety management process, and what records or other evidence is needed to provide traceability in the event of an incident. Meaningful systems and relevant documentation - including photos, videos and emails, etc - also provide useful information for an organisation's own internal investigations, audits and reviews.

Thank you - done.

Testing is done under the assumption of detecting impaired cognitive function. Unfortunately, since there is not yet a definitive test for cognitive functioning, everyone has to rely on testing for levels deemed to be 'safe' or 'harmful' using a generic level across the board. Since individual tolerance for intoxicating or mind-altering substances are known to vary widely, designated levels may well indicate impairment for some but not for others. At the moment, it is still an imperfect methodology for protecting workers from harm due to use of drugs or alcohol.

As a side note, what happens with over-the-counter and prescription drugs that may cause impairment - e.g., many common cold remedies are known to make people drowsy, and I wonder how many people actually follow the instructions on the packaging?

It also doesn't help the cause when a safety manager himself comes to work off his head on tramadol for a painful knee, brushing off concerns that he might not be in a fit state to be at work. His response when queried was, "Believe me, if I have an accident, it didn't happen at work!" Eventually we persuaded him to go home. He probably should not have been driving, but absolutely refused to go home any other way, even though he staggered around the carpark and nearly tried to open a car that was not his.....

"Safety Sensitive" is an interesting term, and not the only consideration when setting policy. When I worked at Ports of Auckland, the CEO decided that ALL roles are 'safety-sensitive' - even administrative and IT roles make decisions that could affect worker safety if they were impaired. In addition, it was recognised that such a designation has the potential to be divisive within the organisation and everyone should be expected to turn up to work with full cognitive functioning - so the same rule for everyone.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to managing risks and what is reasonably practical, and requiring evidence of appropriate competence to operate any equipment safely would be reasonably practical.

There are still many gaps in NZ's system, so PCBUs cannot expect to rely entirely on other PCBUs to hold up their end of the work - for many people, if they can get away with doing less, they will, and if they have successfully used those EWPs without any formal systems or qualification, they will just keep doing it until someone pulls them up on it. Since all PCBUs have shared responsibilities, either insist on appropriate risk management systems and practices, or find a contractor who will do the right thing. If a PCBU knowingly accepts contract work from a contractor who doesn't manage the risks, you are effectively taking on those risks yourself. In addition, every PCBU that allows the requirements to slip just makes it that much more difficult to manage other aspects of contractor work, making a rod for their own back.

At the end of the day, doesn't this risk, like every other, come down to doing everything that is 'reasonably practical' to manage the risk? In the absence of legislation that mandates requirements, we then need to look to 'tertiary' regulatory instruments, or as I like to call them, de facto laws. Guidelines, Codes of Practice, industry standards, etc would all detail what we 'ought reasonably to have known' and what would be expected as 'reasonably practical'.