• Fire extinguishers in work vehicles
    They have them as we conduct hot work I and the company have no expectations that they are going to fight a fire beyond the first response approach to contain and in some cases get a clear path out. If something is well ablaze they are trained to not go near it and to call for help, it's only a company vehicle or property and not to put themselves at risk.
  • Fire extinguishers in work vehicles
    Not us we carry them onto our customer sites as it is their site rules and short of not doing the work what would you suggest, and I will point out they are corporates....
  • Fire extinguishers in work vehicles
    It may as easy as that on customer sites you must have one fitted as is the case with our company and if it is not fitted you are not allowed on site. So in the long run it is a business choice and yes I do train my workers to use them.
  • Contact details for workers
    Maily online inductions and the like, they want individual emails and I am not handing out personal emails or cell phone numbers. most are pretty good about it but some just have their way of doing things and everyone must conform.
  • Contact details for workers
    so if your staff are doing inductions for another company you would not give the information out?
  • Forklift Operators Certificate
    Every day the Health and Safety Gravy Train gets longer.

    I agree with that statement as every time we have a qualification, there just happens to be 20 providers ready to go
  • Workshop Service Pits
    We filled them with concrete and invested in large vehicle hoists
  • Hazardous substances at retail
    Our approach was to get the supplier of the aerosols to advise and provide solutions and it worked really well. They came to site looked at the problem then provided lockable cabinets, and assisting with separation of product
  • Occupational Health Monitoring - Employees Who Want to Opt Out
    It is a personal choice but if they do refuse to consent to the monitoring you need to ensure it is recorded and always available. On our forms, I do ask for the reason so that it can be referred back to when required, they do not have to answer that part but I do encourage them to do so. So far no issues, but we have moved 1 worker away from an environment due to his non-consent he was not totally happy but after discussing the entire issue with him he was understanding that we did not want to keep him in an area where the risk to his health could not be monitored.
  • Forklift Operators Certificate
    Remember that in the background there is a licence review of which forklifts are included. I was involved with some of the conversations and the basic premise of the proposal is that plant including forklifts generally do not get driven on the road. So the thought was that the worker should hold the appropriate vehicle class licence relative to the weights and that the provision of road/warehouse be removed.

    The offshoot is that they are looking to remove the endorsements and the operator course would cover all the required aspects of handling forklifts, so in short, there may come a time where a licence may be required.

    During the conversations, it was also discussed what do you do with all the workers that do not hold a licence for various reasons?
  • What is "good" when it comes to GPS tracking of speed?
    In previous employment they had eroad and also in-cab cameras, the drivers became so obsessed with not getting in trouble they tended to look at the eroad screen to manage the speed, and at the same time camera footage showed that this distracted them from looking at the road for a considerable part of the day.

    My point is these pieces of equipment are tools, but businesses are using them to punish drivers, it is not that they are exceeding the speed limit but what motivates them to do it. Are they under pressure to get jobs completed, are they rushing back to base? Once you understand the motivation you can do something about it.
  • Anybody out there involved in Educational H&S
    Just to add to the conversation the previous company that I worked for also said you could not administer any medical processes beyond first aid, which included the ability to give out panadol, or any medications that could be purchased over the counter, they also concluded that the use of an EpiPen was beyond your allowable duties.
  • Anybody out there involved in Educational H&S
    We had this discussion a few years ago at a previous company and they were of the opinion that an EpiPen is a personal item hence the company would not supply, another factor was the cost of replacing the pens every 12 months when they expire at 62 branches. we ensured that anyone that needed to have one had it on-site and the production manager and safety rep were made aware where it was stored.
  • New Regulations - Plant, Machinery, Work at height
    If you find it please pass it on as I had an inspection 2 weeks ago and there was no mention of any changes
  • Hard hat life


    Great points, I understand that the hard hat for road workers is historical and seen as best practice, their main threat is traffic striking a worker so possibly o a climbing helmet would possibly be more suitable as it takes the side impacts better than a normal hard hat.

    Also intrigued by the helmet that was painted
  • Hard hat life
    So am I reading this right that there is no definitive number just guidelines?
  • Prequal yet again


    You are on track it is a system where a company can say that the contractor has done the prequal, on a recent quote they asked us to go to the site and do a full analysis of the job. In the tender documents, we had to demonstrate that we understood the full scope of the project and present the HSEQ plan for the job to be done. This is preferable for me as it is targeted to the project and not broad brush, I must also point out that we had done the annual prequal for that company.

    As for the replacement for WSMP, I am of the understanding that in place of that we would be required to hold ISO 45001.
  • Prequal yet again


    I am with you on that Steve,

    We do Site Wise, SHE, IMPAC, and Eco Portal just to name the 4 that we are required to complete each year, these systems have been sold to customers as a way of ensuring contractors are doing the right thing and having another company take care of it for them. In most cases, we have to pay to do the prequal, and the customer pays to access the information therefore the prequal company is getting paid twice for the same information. A single prequal for all industries would be a great solution so the information is done once and everyone can access it, but so long as we have individual systems this will always be an issue and just duplicated information that has to be updated.