March Updates
Axento Safety provides you with health and safety expert witness and risk management solutions to enhance your business success.
In addition to incident investigations and expert witness services, Axento Safety’s focus is to help create safe, healthy, innovative AND PRODUCTIVE workplaces. Axento Safety partner with you to take the pain out of health and safety, provide safety management systems, reduce the paperwork, achieve certifications, enable increased compliance, enable productivity improvement and achieve this cost effectively.
Contact Jon Temby to improve risk management, grow your business and make your life easier.
FREE: Safety assessment from Axento Safety
Small and Medium business owners (Rem. less than $20m) in Victoria can apply for WorkSafe Victoria’s OHS Essentials Program and get a free workplace safety assessment provided by Jon Temby of Axento Safety. WorkSafe will send me (if you request Axento Safety) or you could select an unknown other OHS consultant. The structured program involves visiting your workplace to assess the OHS management needs, risks etc and tailor an Action Plan to help you manage them. There is also a follow up visit to check/discuss progress on the plan. Read more…
Jons Comments: This program will get you started and/or assist you to make further improvements to your current OHS management strategies. If you are based in the Melbourne CBD, suburbs or nearby areas please put in ‘Axento Safety’ when selecting your preferred consultant. If you are based further afield, please contact me first on 0439 441 264. Why not apply for the program today! I look forward to assisting
Elevating Work Platform problems
Elevating work platforms, both scissor and boom types, (EWPs) are prolific on construction and other sites and are often the first choice for work at height.
With the number of EWPs now in use we are seeing more incidents involving this type of plant occurring, such as:
- ground persons being struck by the moving plant,
- operators being crushed against structures
- EWPs hitting or working too close to live powerlines; and
- EWPs overturning. Read more…
The use of EWPs for construction work is high risk construction work (HRCW) as it involves:
- the movement of powered mobile plant;
- will generally involve a risk of a person falling more than two metres; and
- May also involve the EWP working on or near energised electrical installation or services.
As it is HRCW, a safe work method statement (SWMS) must be prepared for the work and followed while the work is being undertaken.
Unfortunately, many of the SWMS I have seen for EWP operation have focused on work at height, sometimes risks to ground personnel and proximity of overhead powerlines, but rarely have overhead structures or ground/floor conditions been identified as risks that have to be controlled.
If you use EWPs, make sure you have identified all the risks present and implement controls to reduce the risks, so far as reasonably practicable. For more information:
- WorkSafe’s Safety Alert – Workers crushed in EWPs and Information about – safe work method statements
- WorkSafe’s EWP crushing safety animations about Boom Lifts and Scissor Lifts
Safety Alert – Safe use of flammable refrigerants
WorkSafe Victoria has issued a Safety Alert following a recent incident involving flammable refrigerants that resulted in death or injury.
http://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/info/publications/alert/safe-use-of-flammable-refrigerants-in-refrigeration-and-air-conditioning-systems
Engineering company guilty over death
An engineering business has been convicted over the death of a worker in May 2014. The 30-year-old diesel mechanic died after a load frame from an underground haul truck slipped from its supports and fell on him at the company’s workshop. Read more…
Jons comments: The causes of this incident apply in principle to all workplaces where heavy objects, are lifted or propped up and people can get beside or underneath them. I was involved with a similar fatality some years ago where the forks of a forklift truck were elevated and were being supported on wooden props for maintenance, soon after the hydraulics were released, the props failed and the forks crushed the mechanic below. It was very quick, not pretty and very avoidable. How about using these examples to review your own practices? That should include putting the spare wheel under the car while jacking it up!
Worker collapses due to heat
A worker has collapsed from suspected heat exhaustion at a construction site. Read more…
Jons Comments: I was present recently when a person was being treated for suspected heat exhaustion having collapsed on a very hot and humid day. There may still be some hot weather before the end of the season. Do you have good systems in place to ensure that your workers do not suffer heat exhaustion and its associated complications? Please contact me if unsure.
Warning on “improper crossover” between industrial matters and safety issues
The safety landscape is not getting easier for the safety profession, according to a leading OHS lawyer, who said there is an increased trend towards an “improper crossover” between industrial matters and purported safety issues. Read more…
Jons Comments: I have come to expect to see safety management efforts undermined when health and safety issues become tangled with industrial issues. Steve Bell states that “The more safety is ‘misused’ for industrial reasons, the more this is undermined.” I have been fortunate enough to contribute to resolving several industrial issues that were supposedly based on health and safety but in fact were not. The unions can be very useful in assisting employees to have a powerful say on matters of concern to them however they can also be unhelpful when their representatives start misusing health and safety issues to bully their way into making deals. All issues need clarity, legitimate health and safety issues need support, bullying and misinformation need immediate correction.
How OHS can get ahead with safety analytics
A key factor which holds organisations back from embracing valuable safety analytics is a tendency towards entrenched safety analysis which focuses on lag indicators, reporting norms and metrics – within both the safety profession and a lot of organisations, according to an expert in the area. Read more…
Jons comments: If you are interested in obtaining a good understanding of your organisations health and safety awareness, perceptions and understanding in order to make evidence based decisions for improvement, please contact me. I am currently working with an organisation that has developed a well balanced and cost effective online safety diagnostic tool that can very quickly provide you with objective data from each team, site, management level etc across your business. This data can then be used to make informed decisions for performance improvement.
Workers fined over death of fellow workers
An employee has been fined $11,000 and ordered to pay $1745 in costs over the death of a fellow worker at a hay baling workplace at Narrogin in Western Australia in 2013. Read more…
An employee of an e car dealership has been fined $9500.00 (and ordered to pay $12,052.75 in costs) over the death of a fellow worker in 2013. Read more…
Jons Comments: Both of these tragic cases highlight the importance of ensuring that safe ways of work are followed and also to clearly identify and inform workers about what happens if someone chooses to ignore safe ways of work. As managers, we need to draw the line in the sand and make health and safety compliance a condition of employment. It is too late after the event.
Fatality was avoidable
If either of two construction companies in charge of a road works site had followed key health and safety procedures a young mother of two would not have died, a judge has found. Read more…
Jons Comments: This sort of tragic outcome is all too common: we spend time and effort in developing safe and efficient ways to manage workplace risks but a failure to properly implement those procedures can lead to fatalities. Another recent example was Toll Transport who allegedly failed to fully implement their Traffic Management Plan and a father of three was fatally crushed: Toll were fined $1 million dollars but the real costs to the dead workers wife, children and extended family, his workmates, Toll management and reputational damage are incalculable. Management and employee awareness, engagement and rigour in implementing health and safety systems are cheap prevention when you look at the alternatives.
Plant and Traffic Management Checklists
WorkSafe WA has issued two new checklists, one on isolating damaged plant and the other on traffic management work.
Jons Comments: both these checklists will be useful for those organisations who have traffic management issues and/or use plant and equipment within their business. Clearly there needs to be additional work done to ensure Plant and Traffic Management are well managed. These checklists will help.