• Covid vaccination - can it be required on H&S grounds?
    Personally, I believe that the requirement for having the vaccine will not come from us, but from our customers who will possibly place that requirement prior to working on sites. We are watching with great expectations to see what the EMA will do and that will guide our process. And Steve has already pointed out the latest court ruling so that may lay the path for future actions....
  • Mask wearing for COVID at expense of other risks
    Nz Safety sell Miteywipes that clean and also stop glasses from fogging up
  • Contractor Pre Qual
    My remark was 6 months ago and the situation has changed we are using Totika and just pointing our customers is that direction

    So are Aconex, Oracle, Eco Po
  • vehicle incident form
    We use the insurers form and load it against the event in the H&S system, no need to do our own form.
  • Temperature Checks for Covid-19 at work
    We did temperature self-checking and have found it too inaccurate as the workers may have just come in from the cold or even biked to work, So we are doing a standard declaration each morning. Our staff are not health professionals so expecting to get any degree of accuracy is asking a bit much...
  • Tell us something about yourself that might surprise readers
    I hold a qualification in Gunsmithing, including 20 years of full-time experience...now I do it as a hobby
  • Is Totika Prequalification being adopted?
    I would like for a site visit to be part of the prequal the same as when Telarc audit for ISO Standards
  • Is Totika Prequalification being adopted?
    My understanding is that Totika is not the prequal as such but an umbrella that prequals are registered by the company providing the service, The upshot is previously I had to do 5 prequals as our customers used differing suppliers for the service. Now I do 1 through one of the prequal suppliers and that is it, my customers are logging onto Totika to see the result. If I am wrong please correct me. I see it as a great step forward and it is now up to the companies that supply the service to get up with the play and help reduce the compliance that we as customers are required to do.

    The only difference in the prequals currently is that some companies have promoted their content better and created an industry out of it. Hence under Totika they may see a reduction in customers.
  • Hazardous zones and mobile phones
    They also have pay at the pump using cell phones, so it must be unsafe until we need to get money.....
  • Display boards with "Number of days since last LTI"
    I have not seen these for a while but a company I worked for had one. I had a comment from a worker one day that made me take it down, he said " we do not report accidents as who wants to be that person that broke the record for the longest period without an accident"
  • Who pays medical costs for a work injury
    I am in agreeance as it involves costs it may be HR and not H&S. But a company that I worked for set up an account with the A&E and also reimbursed medicine costs if it was work-related. It worked as it took the pressure of the worker to find money at what could be considered a stressful time.
  • Health Monitoring - Duty to Advise WorkSafe
    A simple answer to your question is No we have not but we do biannual health checks and they have not shown any drastic changes that can be directly related to welding fumes.
  • Emergency Communication Apps
    We have a distress alarm in our vehicles that when activated sends an alert to 2 people, and it does work as I tested it the other day without warning them. It is a function within our GPS platform.
  • Welding fume extraction
    I agree as I went to a site the other day that had fitted LEV and it cost just over 75k and from what I saw made little difference as the workers were not moving it along with the weld site, I am also looking at PAPR being a preferred option but saw that there was another option of on torch so thought it is worth some consideration. all said and done we do have ventilation but the workers forget to turn it on every day so I have made it my daily task first thing in the morning.
  • Welding fume extraction
    No the unit that is integrated into the handpiece, I already have portable units but they do not work for all situations.
  • Supermarket safety
    I am with Jono on that and there is no need to overthink it
  • mouse arm and repetitive strain injuries
    he has gone to a physio for assessment, and working it from there
  • Hot Work
    Within the workshop environment, we do not use a hot permit as it is part of the daily work, so long as all the appropriate daily measures are in place and followed. The only time we may require a permit is when a contractor comes to site to do hot work, this is to ensure they have the controls in place for what they are doing.
  • Drug & Alcohol policy for contractors v employees
    I think that the most recent event involving a member of the law enforcement community highlights the risk of alcohol impairment in the workplace.
  • Drug & Alcohol policy for contractors v employees
    WE just have a 1-page policy and refer to the testing regime, and regardless of my personal thoughts the process is here to stay as long as our customers insist on testing being done as part of our contractual obligations I will continue to do it.

    In the process, I have included the methodology of the testing and included the outcomes under each test situation, including the use of equipment post-test.

    You can email me and I can send you what I have,