I guess it would make great TV if a contestant took a winger of a 2m scaffold in the middle of the night and took out a camera operator. Nothing like backboards and stiff necks on set for a bit of drama. — Sarah Bond

Imagine the ratings!

The Block contestants stand to earn a lot of money and the show owners are raking in the marketing/product placement dollars. To me this moves the show beyond the realms of home DIY. People are being put at risk due to poor working at heights practice and fatigue issues. Apparently, all in the name of 'good tv' this is ok in NZ. — Sarah Bond

Because signing in is going to prevent someone falling off a dodgy scaffold? I wonder how much that app paid for that product placement.

To be fair, Wolfie did go on the rampage last night because someone hadn't signed in, which lead to a nice hazard app product placement shot. — Sarah Bond

Sorry I haven't watched the block in a long time (maybe never as I am probably confusing The Block and Mitre10 Dream Home... that is how long it has been!) But I am guessing that the show hasn't "sold" the property to the contestants, so if the contestants are living in them then the show would be a landlord and since they would be engaging the contractors/suppliers/etc. then it would be definitely a workplace - and the only people who would be protected from prosecution under HSWA by calling it a "home" would be the contestants themselves...

to be fair WorkSafe could just walk onto set and issue an improvement notice as per their powers under HSWA... but then imagine the negative press they would get from "busting up the iconic Block" (given Discovery/Newhub would not likely be unbias on their reporting of it). Would just be another story for the general public's perception of H&S gone mad!
Pretty sure that would never happen though as WorkSafe are likely too afraid of the bad press to do anything.

You can always make a complaint with the Broadcast Standards Authority, given the similarity with the Advertising Standards Authority decision to make Meadowfresh change their ad to stop showing a 10 year old breaking the law by riding her bike on the footpath - similar situation here just different content so different authority to deal with it...

Feel free to rip my approach apart and tell me where you think a matrix would strengthen things......thats a genuine statement, not an arrogant one, I want to learn from others with more experience, I'm here to grow. — Riki Brown

Don't see any reason to rip that approach apart at all - reasonable approach and I don't think a risk matrix would realistically help in any way (and as I said before using one may have resulted in a less than optimum result). One question I am keen to hear your viewpoint on is how are you determining that the "risk is minimised to a acceptable level"?

Reason that I am keen to hear your answer is I am expecting that without using a risk matrix/score you have removed the common trap of stopping at an arbitrary pre-defined point (getting to the green) rather than actually managing the risk so far as reasonably practically.

I wonder what staff reaction would be if... — MattD2

well I guess I got an answer to my question!

Any tool is dangerous when used in the wrong way...

A risk rating system / risk matrix is a tool to help with prioritising actions in response to multiple risks - in other words a tool to help determine where our limited effort and resources are best allocated at that time. And in my opinion they have no purpose at the task management level in the way that they are now commonly used (e.g. JSAs). And in fact they are causing more harm than good as they very often distracts and dominates the conversation over the discussion of the actual management of the risks (i.e. it has become more about getting to the "green" than managing the risk to as low are reasonably practicable). Taking your example , imagine the additional effort to work through that calculation for every risk and every set of controls, especially if you include the points that and have made that these "risks scores" aren't just a single point on a matrix but a spectrum of possible outcomes. And in the end how much "safer" is the situation by having the number 1 written down somewhere as oppose to actually just talking about the risk management requirements, e.g. "that exhaust fume extraction is a critical control, so if it is not working we aren't working - so we need to be keeping a constant watch on that"... "well then if it is that critical why don't we get this alternative extraction system instead which has an audible alarm when there is not enough flow?"

So to answer the ; no we should not get rid of the risk matrix, but we should get better at using them appropriately... including not using them at all in a lot of cases that we currently are using them!

I worked for one food processing company whose standard building practices was to eliminate all areas where birds could perch or nest - literally there were no flat surfaces within the critical plant that bird could access, beams were either cladded with a minimum slope or bird deterrence was installed (those spikes or brush like things). And even that wasn't 100% effective.
I was thinking sound based deterrents might be available but it would seem like these possibly wouldn't be practical for your situation as they would likely deter your customers as well (since they would have to be audible to humans to be effective on birds).

signposts to research — Kimberley Schofield

What constitutes effective manual handling training? A systematic review
A literature review paper of 53 research papers into the effectiveness of manual handling training.
from the abstract's conclusion - "The evidence collected indicates that manual handling training is largely ineffective in reducing back pain and back injury. High priority should be given to developing and evaluating multidimensional interventions, incorporating exercise training to promote strength and flexibility, which are tailored to the industrial sector."
However the paper does comment that a large proportion of the 53 research papers that were reviewed low of low quality, so got to take it with some salt.

My thoughts are to first focus on where you can physically change how manual handling must be done, e.g. redesign of workspaces, provision of suitable tools, and/or reassessment of standard methods for tasks (breaking down more strenuous tasks into smaller sub-tasks). Although on that last one you've got to be careful - I don't know how true the anecdote is but one story of introducing 25kg bags for concrete drymix bags (compared to 40kg) actually had a negative effect as now it was possible to easily move 50kg at a time rather than the previous 40kg.

The focus on fitness for work by, as the paper indicates, providing strength and flexibility training might give more (long term) bang for the buck than training of "good lifting techniques" (but as expected of an academic paper this questions needs further research...). I wonder what staff reaction would be if workers where heavy manual handling was required were provided a gym on site (or gym membership) and "X hours of strength and flexibility training per week" was part of their job description - i.e. free gym membership and get paid to work out to build/maintain the fitness for work required for the jobs they are required to complete.

The simple answer to this is (as far as I know) since there are currently no hazardous substances that are defined in a safe work instruments to require health monitoring there is no requirements to provide WorkSafe NZ with any health monitoring reports (as per the regulations).
Note: Seems like there is at least one SWI going through the process that will require health monitoring for ethanedinitrile (EDN)

How would an insurance company not view H & S consultant as "no longer an approved profession"? Has something changed and have we become more than a "Professional" without notification? — Ian Clark

It is nothing to do with their view on H&S being a profession or not, it is related to the risk of covering PI for those types of services. I would think that the talk of increased legal liability for those providing H&S advice in Australia might have spooked them.

Has a P2 filter - so its filtered air hitting their faces. Will be nice in summer with a bit of a breeze going by. — Andrew

Also a benefit that with the supply air drawn from the waist it is not directly in the fumes as a normal P2 respirator would be.

NZISM have an agreement with an insurer for H&S Consultants. Made the application process much easier and the premiums seemed reasonable from what I was told to expect for PI, etc. insurance.
If you are a member of NZISM it should be at the bottom left of your main page once you log in (would provide more details but waiting for my membership to come back active!).

...written to meet audit requirements and not necessarily the business needs... — Alex

Oh but it was written to meet their business needs... the "business need" to reduce cost by getting the 20% discount on their ACC levy.

'I went down to the planning department and looked up the height in the building records.' — Steve H

Ahhhhh the fallacy continues - the GM and Safety Officer were only concerned about what was planned, the physicist and engineer were concerned with the reality of the situation...

more likely today the H&S Officer would be taking the ladder away because "this siege has a no ladders policy"

Are you sure you haven't missed a couple of zeros for the rest of world figures? Seems like most are at 0.005mg/m³, or maybe confusing between hexavalent and trivalent/divalent chromates which still have a TWA limit of 0.5mg/m³. With a lot of government advisory groups recommending the 0.00002mg/m³ TWA limit that WorkSafe have adopted.

MBIE did some consultation on this about 18 months ago, but there has been no real mention of it since.
https://www.mbie.govt.nz/have-your-say/implementing-the-health-and-safety-at-work-act-better-regulation-plant-structures-and-heights/

My honest opinion is it is more to bring all the H&S regulations under the HSWA title rather than still having the '95 regs and the PECPR sitting with an HSE title.

Also, although the overall incidence appears higher in NZ, the percentage of injuries above 6 weeks time off is far higher in Australia and >1year is three time higher over there. Is this to do with the injuries, or the way the different compensation schemes work? If the injuries, does this mean we're actually performing better over here in terms of those very long term/permanent major injuries? — Craig Marriott

Or is it the case of the Brodie Helmet - Australians survive what would be a fatal incident in NZ but suffer longer term injuries as a result.
Also I would expect that NZ's ACC system shouldn't have much of an influence on this data as Australia has a statutory requirement for all employer to have Workers Compensation Insurance, so basically ACC but for work injuries only.

The important question to me is not the comparison, but why the NZ figures have gone up significantly... — Craig Marriott

I completely agree with this Craig. We need to stop the pissing contests and concentrate on what matters - not the numbers at the end of any given the day, but what we are doing to improve in general.

Risk Manager (from Impac) is another common one, and I also know of Mango as well (but never used it).

What is your actual research question (if you don't mind sharing) - as this will likely be some very interesting research/findings. Generally what I have seen in the past is that, despite what is claimed on the box, most H&S management systems boil down to and incident management system (reporting and recording injuries, near misses, etc.) and/or a risk register. A lot have "additional functionality" but in reality these hardly get utilised as much as they are promoted by the system provider. One glaring hole in the Digital H&S Systems market is the availability and functionality of actually useful APIs to be able to integrate the system with the wider organisation's systems.

Somewhat related to the start of this thread, I am interested to see how the current pre-qualification schemes available in NZ stack up in regards to the Totika Bronze/Silver/Gold standards. However can you explain the difference between a Silver and Gold assessor as from the Assessment Scheme standard they seem to be identical (i.e. they require the same information/standard).

Please visit www.chansz.org/totika — Jon Harper-Slade

Hey John - think there is a typo in that link :wink:
I'm guessing you meant www.chasnz.org/totika