Thanks for the feedback. Maybe they need another heading? Maybe non-negotiables is the wrong wording. Set of principles? Is this the name of them? — Lee Keighley

As you mentioned in the OP, Golden Rules / Life Saving Rules / etc. have been a typical approach by many construction companies. A director of one company I know that is involved in the construction industry (but not an actual physical works company) was keen for years to develop a set of Golden Rules for the company, but it stagnated as it didn't really fit with the ethos of company as a whole... so what happened was when the push for Critical Risks emerged in the NZ Safety Industry they intertwined their Top 10 Critical Risks with a set of their Top 10 H&S Behaviors - which is similar to what @Craig Marriott mentioned above.

hat frustrates me is the amount of SDS that don't comply. Surely it would be sensible as part of the import approval process to ensure that the SDS is NZ compliant.... Instead the onus often ends up on the end user to hold the supplier to account and update before purchasing — E Baxter

And I have seen situation where the end user can't even do that so resorts to ChemGoogle to find a SDS for the product... which in a couple of cases I have seen an overseas SDS provided which has the same name as the one on the can but actually a completely different product inside due to what is/sin't allowed to be used by either of the countries!

Yes contact details and HSNO classifications are required... but can have some specific changes in certain circumstances.
Contact details can be an overseas supplier as long as the product is imported directly by the user for use (i.e. not for sale to another person).
GHS Classifications can be used instead of HSNO classifications, with some specific requirements.

Schedule 2 of the notice provides a comparison table between HSNO and GHS classifications.

But this is an SDS. The information is supposed to be specific to the product in question so it should specify either "No specific eye protection required" or state what eye protection is required. I could accept conditional requirements in line with specified conditions such as "no respiratory protection required if used outdoors in a well ventilated area, otherwise a P2 half face respirator is recommended where the atmospheric concentration is above 3mg/m3 but under 30mg/m3. For atmospheric concentrations is above 30mg/m3 seek specialist advice."
But basically saying do you own damn risk assessment is not acceptable.

Schedule 1 specifies in the requirements for NZ complaint SDS in the EPA Notice for SDSs

identification of the specific types of personal protective equipment needed to minimise the potential for illness or injury due to exposure to the substance, based on the hazards of the substance and the potential for contact. — Schedule 1, Section 8c

For a independent safety management system audit I would recommend Telarc too. They can audit against international standards, or potentially their own Q-Safe standard might be a better fit for the relative size/operations/risks of a school.

Thanks Chris - some good references there. Yes I was aware of the regional permit system for the petrochemical sites in/around Taranaki - do I understand you correctly that this is no longer in use (it's been a good 4 or so years since I have looked at it)?

Thanks for the reply @Chris Anderson - that is where my digging has got to too. Seems like there is common process in the petrochemical industry on PTW, which is why I originally mentioned DuPont as they seem to be one of the leading players when PTW systems were becoming common place. These also seem to have been adopted to certain extents by medium industrial / manufacturing companies. But then there are some widely different processes by other industries (such as NZ electrical generation/transmission).
With it being common in NZ for contractors to work over a large variety of industries I do feel for them having to be up-to-speed on multiple processes for the same type of work depending where they are... and no wonder it can be a struggle to get some contractors to "follow the rules" when it can be completely different to what had been ingrained in them depending on where they have spent most of their time... however as for solutions, I do not have any just right now unfortunately.

Hi Mark - what are you after specifically? Certification of your H&S management system to a standard, gap analysis or a robust operations inspection with regards to safety?
I'll message you a contract in Christchurch.

True that they are good at letting you know if they consider a specific case notifiable or not, I was more talking about their input prior to try and determine any sort of threshold for notifying.

But that raises a good point - once you start notifying these "grey" areas cases, keep a good record then review that periodically to refine what does/doesn't need to be notified. That will give you a much better case in the off chance you get pinged for not notifying something that in the past they told you didn't need to be notified.

I am guessing that these situation may be the kind similar to (or actually) a petrol station forecourt... untrained operators (the public) accidentally spilling fuel from a pump.

...get clarification directly from WorkSafe (in writing preferably!) — Aaron Marshall

Good luck with that! (as Chris has just experienced!)

It is interesting that you client is putting the burden on a contractor to make the decision to notify or not and/or are not being involved in making the decision on what should be notifiable or not.
To be clear it is the PCBU who managers or controls the workplace that has the duty to prevent the scene of a notifiable event from being disturbed, and the PCBU who's conduct resulted in the notifiable event to notify WorkSafe - I would be making this clear to the client.

My suggestion to the client would be to put a process in place where any significant spill of fuel occurs is that they call you, then they call WorkSafe and let them know what fuel was spilled, approximately how much, that the spill containment team have been called out to minimize the risk and to request that the site can be released once the clean up is completed.

As for what is a significant spill, I would look at other parts of the hazardous substances legislation that deal with emergency management of spills - such as for petrol it could be 50 L (being the volume over which a hazardous substance location would be required if it was the only hazardous substance on the site and it was being stored/use in open containers).

Once you come to some agreement on the process and definition I would run it past a lawyer to check...

planned could also include contingency/emergency planning - if the load happens to be dropped we are sure it would not be a risk to anyone as our plan had excluded everyone from anywhere it could drop.

The section in the act is pretty specific on listing what a serious risk is in my mind (the only clarification would be that risk could have cause a notifiable injury in other circumstances) - what I seem to see the struggle with is what is considered "unplanned or uncontrolled" and "immediate or imminent". My go to question would be to ask "was there any physical controls stopping a person from being hurt, or did we not hurt anyone just because of pure luck.
Example being if during a crane lift you drop a load - if the only control that stopped anyone from being underneath the load was a site/company "golden rule" to not walk under suspended loads then I would still consider that a notifiable incident, However if the area had been cordoned off and access to underneath the load was restricted (even just by warning/danger tape) then I would lean towards it being planned/controlled which removes the immediate/imminent risk.

there is a distinct pattern of Officers scrambling to cover their legal risks, offloading many of these responsibilities to safety managers / advisors who are not provided with sufficient authority or resources to do what is needed. — Sheri Greenwell

The irony of this statement is by doing exactly this (pushing it down the chain and washing their hands of the responsibility) they have actually increased their personal risk as, as you say, they then do not provide the business with sufficient resources to manage their risks (which is one of the critical aspects of their due diligence in the first place).

Thankfully for TVNZ staff the RWC will end and the risk will disappear. — Andrew

Was going to say the same thing - this is probably one of the things that annoys me the most in safety - it being used as the justification of actions that are not even slightly related to managing safety. Case in point, ligitimate that they have banned using hair straighteners / curling irons / etc. if their is a real business risk in the case a fire alarm gets set off an the building has to be evacuated and the world cup coverage goes down (sounds like they have been burnt on this in the past!) - just don't throw safety in there thinking it is going to automatically strengthen your case!

That's what prompted me to ask the question in the first place. Although there is the extra bit of

...must, so far as is reasonably practicable, take steps to lodge notice... — Monty

So my question is whether making sure at least one PCBU has lodge would be SFARP steps.

Remembering that these regulations where brought in under the old act and so the S34 duty to collaborate wasn't yet a thing when they wrote it... although only the main PCBU lodging seems to have been the norm even pre 2016.

I have never really used it to build and maintain an inventory within the tool itself. I have used it many times since it was first released as a good quick check of the main regulatory requirements, but I could never really see myself using it as a compliance (e.g. inventory) tool just because it is (or seems) too 1-dimensional.

I have a story of a site supervisor that was feed-up with people just signing the JSA without reading it, so...

One day he gathers his crew around the normal morning toolbox circle to talk about the days work, while the JSA is passed around to read and sign. Once everyone has signed on to the JSA he leads his crew around the corner to a shipping container used to store small parts for the work (valves, bolts, those type of things). Once inside the supervisor stands in the doorway, blocking their escape...
He pulls the JSA back out, hands it to one of the crew and asks him to start reading the tasks details "again"...

"All crew will report to the parts container to collect tools, equipment, parts for the days work; Hazards.... / Controls...."

Next line "Once inside the container all crew will immediately remove their clothes; Hazards - slips/trips/falls.... / Controls...."

..."Once all crew are naked they shall be requi.... :scream:"

After that day no-one on his crew would sign any JSA without first reading the entire thing!

What are the qualifications that are required for a job in H&S? I would say that (at least in NZ) the H&S industry is still professionalising. This means there are is a very wide range for what is defined as competent in the industry - we should not kid ourselves that we are close to where other professional industries are at, such as medical, legal, engineering or finance. Don't get me wrong, we are progressing towards it - we just have a fair way to go, however this does have an impact on the value that society places on H&S professionals in general (at least in relation to other regulated professions).

In my experience the construction industry is heavy compliance focused (and not just in H&S), as well as an increased level of external monitoring of performance than most other industries due to the typical contractual arrangements - this has lead to a reliance on efficient/effective Construction HSEQ Compliance Managers, which if you engage a good one can significantly reduce risk of costs/delays/etc. due to getting the right information with sufficient quality to the external monitoring party (e.g. the engineer to the contract) at the right time... this can justify a higher salary (as it should save money in the long run)

On a side note - yesterday I saw a presentation which included research on "job satisfaction" surveys and one of the findings was (rough memory here) about 2/3rds of workers would forgo a pay-rise if instead their boss was fired... which goes to show that job satisfactions does trump basic financial remuneration...

The tough thing with a definition like HiPo is (as you've found) there is no single global definition for the term - usually it is company specific, and at best maybe a national industry term that most of the big players use. This is fine if it is purely being used internally, but will soon turn into chaos if the board starts to compare across other companies - I think the biggest trouble of trying to use a "standard" industry definition for a board is you will inevitably end up with multiple opinions on what the "actual" right definition is based on their past experience or other boards they sit on (and if we are talking independent directors then this is something the business is actually paying them for - clearer outwards perspective instead of executive directors who can tend towards an inward focus).

Recently our board are asking more visibility on our critical risk... — Mark Kenny-Beveridge

The fact that the board has started this by asking for more visibility on critical risk may in fact give you something to play with... if they are up for it! If instead going with the typical approach of defining HiPo based on the actual or potential outcome, maybe consider if you could instead define it by what went wrong... by using your critical risks / critical risk controls as the triage metrics you can capture a clearer picture of where, when and how your risk management process broke down in areas of high risk, which should also lead to better detailing of what needs/could be done to strengthen that risk management processes (both in terms of actions, and clear connectives from incident to action for the board to support).

Just one other issue I have seen in the past where the definition of HiPo is based on the actual/potential outcome is the reasonable common occurrence of events that do not end up on the intuitive side of the line - someone slips over and rolls their ankle ending up with a few days off to recover on crutches being considered a HiPo (temporary disability), where a chain snapping during a heavy lift is not just because it was only 500mm off the floor at the time it happened...

I'm interested in what you are going to do with the definition once you have it. As I usually see the term HiPo defined for the purpose of what is going to be seriously investigated - i.e. if it's HiPo it's ICAM. if this is the case I would challenge to think from the other direction - define (with the company) what you will put the effort into investigating, and what falls under the heading of stuff not to sweat.

As for directly answering the question - I worked for a company where HiPo was roughly defined as LTI or above injury or a non-injury with a potential risk rating of high or extreme.