As the WorkSafe article says, the trailer's locking handle was not engaged and the safety chain was not attached - two simple safety features that many would consider just "common sense" but unless someone has been taught about these things (either from their company/trainer or their parents/family/etc.) they can be completely unknown to someone who has never hitched a trailer. — MattD2

This can be extended to changing a wheel Matt, if the one on one corner of a vehicle goes a bit square on it's bottom. Once upon a time, in a far and distant land, Dads were (a) around and (b) did small maintenance tasks on the family car and house. Children learned by watching, asking and assisting him (in the main). Now that basic level of do-ability can't be assumed and commonsense isn't at all common.

Hello Muhammad, does the check list that you use draw attention to the fact that two different sizes of ball and hitch may be encountered on trailers in New Zealand?

In a rule change a number of years back the Government introduced the 50mm towball, in line with the European regulations. About 95% of towballs now sold are 1 7/8” diameter, and the remainder are 50mm diameter. 1 7/8” is the most common towball size used on vehicles in NZ, while 50mm is standard in Europe. There is not a lot of difference between the two sizes – a whole 2.375mm, to be exact!

This has brought about a lot of confusion as while a 1 7/8″ coupling will not fit on a 50mm towball, the 1 7/8″ towball fits into the 50mm trailer coupling easily but is a loose fit, which is very dangerous and must not be done.

For about 25 years I owned a pole house high on the Eastern slopes of Lyttelton, built in the 1970's it had a balcony across the front and down one side to the front door. Usual post and three broad railings, easy for small children to climb.

For each new child visitor, family, friends of either our daughter or son, the following safety briefing was delivered- The child was taken to the highest point, given a raw egg, told to tap it, tap their head, asked if it felt about as hard, and then told to drop the egg and watch what happened.........No child ever climbed on the railings.

It's interesting to contrast WS and Maritime NZ Alan, the latter seem to have a laser focus on bringing prosecutions successfully.

Back in the day Gail (1992), when I made the move from working as a Service Technician maintaining and repairing battery electric forklifts and materials handling equipment, to setting up and managing a green fields plastic sheet extrusion and recycling company, I set up and ran my own "in house" forklift certification program.

There was/is a Code Of Practice For Forklift Training Providers, there used to be lots of resources on the (then) Dept Of Labour website, and I had the resources gained from a number of manufacturer's courses and info- I did this because i had a certain amount of prior knowledge, a lot of time, limited financial resources and not a lot of people to train/maintain their skills.

So long answer short, yes you could, but these days, I'd agree with Andy above, the externally sourced program has the benefit of your operators gaining an "F" endorsement, enabling them to drive on public roads (the definition of "public road might frighten you)

Don't take the role on unless you get sufficient financial resources to do it properly, from the get go, WS has suffered from under funding. Beyond that, all the posters make valid points.

In any role I've held, listening to,and working along side the troops has always been the way to separate MD/Directors wishful thinking from actual reality.

I was Rob, my wife and I were the first Jim's Test & Tag franchisees in Christchurch back in 2009, we operated under the JTT banner for the ten year contract we had with them, and then ran our business as an indi operation, At that point we expanded into Thermal Imaging along with being a test & tag service provider, I was also a contract Test & Tag Trainer for a couple of years.

My intro to T&T occurred when i took over managing a plastic recycling plant with a HQ in Aussie, I'd only had my butt in the chair for a week or so when i got a call from their Sydney based H&S manager asking me where my Test & Tag results were, fobbed him off with the newbie speech. Duly asked the Office Manager and she looked at me blankly and suggested calling the Electricians that handled our plant's break downs, boss there said 'mate if you want to know when we last tagged your stuff, get off the phone and have a look at our tags, or go back through our invoices"- couldn't see either of these options calming the bloke in Sydney down, so I wound up breaking out my test gear and brought some tags and a log book.

Few years down the track and both me and "Mrs Jim", as she became affectionately known, needed jobs and we decided that after fifteen years of running businesses for others, we should do something for ourselves, Test & Tag ticked a number boxes (LOL) We wound up having to sell up when I was diagnosed with terminal rust in 2019.

Funnily enough, we went through their manufacturing plant every six months, Aussie owned company, so H&S/test & tag/PPE stitched into their DNA. Yes there are specific requirements in the HSWA for importers/suppliers of equipment, but from experience, largely ignored by many, especially someone on their computer searching Temu or Aliexpress etc who sees what they perceive as a "bargain".

Take portable RCDs as an example, the HPM little orange RCD box sold in NZ complies with our electrical requirements for these items to contain a Type A RCD, these can cope with AC that has (possibly) a DC component, so cheap RCD boxes from Aussie or Asia won't have the correct RCD to cope with our situation. The New Zealand Regulator requires Type A's because we have the High Voltage DC link for the grid from Benmore to Haywards, and the theory is remnants of this could be present in the reconverted AC from Haywards on.

The Fire Evacuation regulations also impose a responsibility to maintain electrical appliances in a safe condition

In your electrical safety model Rob, how do you detect the item that your managing director saw in the US or China at a trade show and thought "gee that would be a useful thing for the troops to use", brought one (or more home) cut off the plug the item's maker fitted to it and replaced it with an A/NZ plug? The item in question is rated at 110V.****

The popular assumption with Electrical Safety is that it's wholly and solely concerned with stopping an individual getting zapped, lethally or otherwise. That is a part of it, but it is just as much concerned with a dodgy item not causing an issue with the electrical installation or the grid in the event of a major issue. So it's detecting things that could cause a fire, are missing guards and safety features, aren't compliant with NZ electrical requirements

**** Have encountered this with a steel reinforcing manufacturer who brought in a bunch of benders and cutters, also struck something that might be a little more in your comfort zone. An office for a US based equipment maker that used computer equipment sent to them from the US parent office, these items all had 110V IEC leads that they were connecting via a travel adaptor. This is a bad thing, but what was worse, a Registered Electrician had fitted pass tags to these. So two issues, wrongly rated lead, connected with a non compliant plug- potential risk of catching fire.

In the case of the benders, sorry these don't comply, with the computer equipment, the issue was the leads/plugs, so the competent fix was to replace all the 110V IEC leads with 240V ones (after confirming that the item it was connecting was rated at 110-240V (NZ nominal voltage 230V so good to go with suitable lead)

My take, FWIW, Electrical Appliance Safety is a tripod, supplying appliances via a "regularly tested RCD" type A is one leg, Competent test & tag of appliances should confirm that tagged appliances comply with NZ Electrical Safety requirements and are "safe" to use at that point is the second leg, regular "documented" user checks are the third leg.

The legal obligation to do "something" is created by Regulation 15 of the Electrical (Safety) Regulations:
15 Using works, installations, fittings, appliances, and associated equipment

(1) A person who owns or operates works, installations, fittings, or appliances must not use, and must
not allow any other person to use, the works, installations, fittings, or appliances if the works,
installations, fittings, or appliances are electrically unsafe. .

Regulation 26 describes some ways that this obligation can be discharged by the person responsible for an electrical installation, or hired or rental equipment,

26 When fittings and appliances in use deemed to be electrically safe

(1)This regulation applies to a fitting or appliance, other than an electrical medical device, that is in
use, or available for use,—
(a) by an employee or contractor of the owner of the fitting or appliance; or
(b) by a hirer or lessee under a hire or lease agreement with the owner of the fitting or appliance; or
(c) by the occupier of premises that are rented or leased from the owner of the fitting or appliance.

I would suggest reading the whole of Reg 26, and not just extracting the portions of it that suit your position.

On the subject of switchboard RCDs, Daylight Saving starts this weekend,along with testing that your smoke alarms are working, checking that your RCDs protecting outlets will trip when you push their test buttons falls into the good idea category.

This "test" won't tell you if it's tripping within the correct time limit, but if you plug a light into the outlet each tripped RCD is protecting, it will give you an indication that it is functional.

Why "test trip" RCDs? Because these items have power on contacts, there can be a galvanic reaction that causes these contacts to stick to each other and not disconnect cleanly/or at all, if the RCD is tripped, either by test or a current leakage issue

One thing my reply above neglected Rob, under AS/NZS3760 safety features fitted by an item's maker must be present, unmodified and functional for the item to be visually assessed as "safe to use", this part of the test & tag regime is something that in my experience sparkies typically ignore.

How will your proposed alternative address this? Typical visual fails are guards missing or modified to reduce their effectiveness, Things like trigger release buttons on circular saws missing and replaced with a metal screw

Functional, correctly wired RCDs "should" prevent an unlucky soul from becoming the dearly departed in most circumstances Rob, however there are at least four possible scenarios where even if the RCD trips at its rated leakage current within the time limit, they will receive a zap that proves lethal.

The Electrical (Safety) Regs don't "require" items to be tested & tagged, but a current tag indicating an item has been inspected and tested IAW AS/NZS3760 is a method to get to "deemed safe", a history of test results provides evidence of an items safety over the period of time an item has been the subject of regular testing.

There are some obvious limitations of TnT, it depends on the skill, training, knowledge, equipment and enthusiasm of the person performing the inspection and tests. It is a snapshot of how something is at the time it was tested, I've TnT'ed a tool in a builders shed one afternoon, gone back to finish off the following morning and found that tool back in the rack with a damaged lead and my tag removed.

I would suggest that your installation RCDs are tested annually and their correct operation confirmed, depending on the nature of your work and the use tools and other electrical equipment are put to, and the environment these items are used in, possibly look at longer retest intervals. This assessment should ideally be documented for future reference.

Under Clause 3, I don't see an exclusion for domestic users, so I'd argue that at least Regulation 15 of the E(S)Rs applies equally to all in NZ that use/consume mains voltage electricity.
Somehow,I don't see Claude being much use in respect of that, though I have a feeling that ES produced a cartoon about the requirement for compliant plugs and voltage markings on appliances, some years ago.

Claude, the much disliked Cat is a product of Energy Safety, a subset of Worksafe since 2012. Personally, as a retired electrical worker, i would prefer that they expended their energy (pun intended) on getting the Electrical (Safety) Regulations 2010 to cite the latest versions of the various electrical AS/NZS Standards they reference as a means of complying with those regulations, along with keeping updated the regulations relating to Gas Work, Gas Appliances etc

EVs are another area ES should be bringing into the E(S)Rs,,

Energy Safety, the Electrical Regulator in New Zealand is lumped under their banner.

The safe supply and use of electricity, components, appliances, work practices in homes,businesses, work sites, mines etc etc means there is a safety education component to their workload,that has to reach the average domestic consumer, small business owner/manager, appliance retailer/wholesalers, mining etc etc,

As ill conceived as Claude The Cat undoubtedly is, this is how the "communications specialists" chose as a means of alerting ordinary domestic users of risks that they may face and measures they can take to reduce them. Everyone that visits Worksafe's web page is a domestic consumer firstly, but may be a "business consumer", or a "Responsible Person" for an Electrical Installation also, as such, they are expected and required to take steps in the business operation they own/manage, but typically may ignore their personal circumstances.

It does not belong under the guise of worker safety. — Andrew

Energy Safety has oversight of the Electrical (Safety) Regulations,amongst other workplaces, Electrical Safety in mines,building sites, the list goes on and on, object to that if you wish. I'd certainly agree that they don't spend their funding wisely given that the regulations that they are responsible for, cite Electrical Standards that are well out of date and are causing compliance anxiety as to what version of a given standard should be followed.

FYI, Standards NZ have released a new version of 3760, AS/NZS 3760:2022

While it does a lousy job, WS is the Electrical Regulator in New Zealand, and they have a small team dedicated to "electrical safety". this isn't confined to workplaces,Andrew. Hence their advice on electric blankets.

Good strategy Shannon, a win win.

Primary hours of work, shifts per week? How many hours do you let/ask/make employees work? How do you manage fatigue with your sites?

Good move Janet, that's the whole flaw with any employment matter, particularly in New Zealand where there are generally few,if any, degrees of separation. The issue is the same with company directorships, where breaking into the "old boys" club is nigh on impossible.

So a list of companies where females have reached branch manager or better level, the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Downer NZ & Road Sciences (National & Christchurch)
Cable Price (Christchurch)
Southfuels (Christchurch)
Corys Electrical (Ashburton)
Gribbles Veterinary (Christchurch)