Trudy said "Nothing ruins your Friday like finding out it's only Thursday."

Yes there is - finding out on Friday that you have to work on Saturday!

Hi Rebecca,
As long as your workshop is a designated 'Hot Work Zone' you will not need permits for work done there. If you have other areas where hot work is routinely carried out you could also designate them in your site plan. You will need to back up those designations with a risk assessment of the zone and review it regularly.

Hi John,
There is no legal requirement for a Forklift Operator to hold a driver licence - although the "F" Endorsement can only be added to a full licence of Classes 1 to 5.
The lack of car driving experience certainly makes training them more difficult, but it doesn't mean they are any less competent Operators than licensed ones (once they have reached the required standard).
However there are some WorkSafe NZ requirements that should be kept in mind for younger employees:
1/ People under the age of 15 cannot work in any area where the work being done is likely to harm the employee
2/ People under the age of 15 are also not allowed to work or assist with work involving machinery, including powered tools and appliances

Hi Stuart,
You did not indicate what provider you are using for your GPS monitoring.
We use Eroad, which provides a Leaderboard that compares the driver/vehicle (your choice) to every other driver/vehicle using Eroad in NZ. It also provides a driver insight report that shows where and when speeding, harsh braking, harsh acceleration and harsh cornering events are occurring and their severity. It is a great coaching tool.
Other GPS monitoring systems have similar capabilities so I suggest you discuss your needs with your provider.

At SLTG we have had this item in our audit for the last 3 years. Each year the requirements have become more stringent.
We do our our forklift training internally and it was easy enough to meet the requirements - and more importantly, to provide the evidence of it.
External training providers (I used to be one) usually have a brief mention of the correct orientation of the cylinder on the machine, but do not go nearly far enough to cover off the requirements handling the gas

What sets the standard for safety is what anyone is prepared to walk passed and ignore, so the concept of looking out for each other is critical to the safety message. Meercats are excellent at this (and loveable as well!) - so a good concept. All I can say is that I would not dare show this advert to our truck drivers! *SIGH* I hope WorkSafe gives themselves a reality check before pushing the [Publish] button next time.

Good morning Carl and Peter,
I work in the transport industry.
One of the biggest issues we face is the traditional WorkSafe attitude: "How can you keep your workers safe even when they do not follow your safety procedures." This ingrains the concept that safety is imposed on workers. We would prefer to encourage our drivers to think for themselves and take responsibility for their own safety.
How do you see Safety II assisting us in this please?

A perfect example last week - I discovered an older truck still being driven on the road but it is so old it does not require seat belts to pass its CoF. After a suggestion that the Manager consider H&S legislation in addition to transport legal requirement that vehicle, and 3 others I didn't know about, are now being fitted with the appropriate seat belts.

This one involved a construction site in the Auckland CBD. The loading zone was on a blind bend in the road and the hoarding reduced visibility even further. The predominantly shingle surface was not leveled as required in our original Site Safety Survey. It had spilled concrete over it and several deep potholes making it very uneven. There was a lot of badly stacked construction material and scaffolding lying around the edges causing congestion. The end result was there was little room for our drivers to move clear of the vehicle while it was being unloaded - unless they stood out on the road! The crane crew unloaded one of our trucks in the incorrect order and a concrete panel subsequently fell off the trailer and the projecting rebar struck the driver. His injuries put him off work for a year. The subsequent PCBU Review found failings by all 5 PCBU's involved and resulted in a complete rewrite of the transport section of the Worksafe ACOP for precast concrete elements

While there is certainly room for improvement in the roading network, I fully agree with Greg that we cannot ignore the Human Factor.

All the iterations of MoT, LTNZ, LTSA, and NZTA, have been aware since the AA Road Safety Foundation Conferences in the 90's that focusing on an engineering solution only will never work. Interestingly, a Swedish road safety expert spoke at the 1st of those conferences in Wellington about their 'Zero Fatalities' target - the 1st in the world to dare to do it.

Another speaker was Professor Gerald Wilde from Canada. He spoke about his book called "Target Risk" and his theory of Risk Homeostasis. Essentially he has shown that our perception of risk acts together with our Risk Tolerance level to control our behaviour like a thermostat. If our perception of risk is less than our tolerance level then we will increase our risk to compensate and vice versa. Notice this is dependent on our perception of the risk - not the actual risk. Consequently our younger drivers are extraordinarily dangerous because they have a high risk tolerance level combined with a low perception of risk.

The other implication of Prof. Wilde's theory is that the safer we make our cars and roads, the less safely we will drive those cars on those roads.

If we truly want to reduce our road toll we need to work on all 3 aspects - vehicle safety, road design and construction, and driver behaviour.

I strongly recommend you read his book. It contains many examples of research that proves the theory.
Go to http://riskhomeostasis.org/ for more info on the theory
and https://www.amazon.com/Target-Risk-Gerald-J-S-Wilde/dp/0969912404 to purchase the book

The issue is not so much about the training, its is about the employee's current competence. The Unit Standard on your NZQA Record of Learning is permanent and does not expire, but it only shows the Assessor considered you 'competent' at the time of the assessment. In many cases, and Forklift training is a clear example, you may be judged competent on a particular make and model of machine (e.g.: Nissan 35 LPG Counterweight fork truck) but operate something completely different in your workplace (e.g.: BT3000 electric reach truck). The Code of Practice makes it very clear that it is the employer's responsibility to ensure their operators are competent on the machine they are using. This means even though you send your staff to an external provider to get their forklift qualifications, you still have to provide internal training on your own machines. I really wonder how many do that?? The larger distribution centres certainly do but I suspect that would be about it.
So back to the question of refresher training. I do not retrain our staff on forklifts as they were well training in the first place and are using them regularly. However I do re-assess their competence annually and also after any significant safety incident, or if they have not operated a forklift for more than 3 months. Other qualifications such as EWP, Rigging, and Crane Operations are handled the same. For Height Safe and 1st Aid, however, I do still use external trainers for refreshers as they are outside my scope of accreditation as a trainer.
This, together with extensive record keeping, means I can always demonstrate our staff are currently competent at any time.

Hi All,
I voted 'NO' to the legalisation affecting our D&A Policy because we will not change it even if the legislation passes into Law. However, the legalisation of marijuana will almost certainly have some effect on our ability to implement the Policy. I have no idea how the legal system would deal with a challenge to a disciplinary action taken under the Policy when it comes to the argument about +ve test result versus 'level of Impairment'. We will all have to look very closely to the wording of our policies so we don't leave a legal loophole for the lawyers to exploit.

I like Sheri's idea. I have tried in vain for several years to find a practicable solution to this issue. Perhaps Derek can help? I would be interested in such a project and happily assist with it.

I think Sam is on the right track. As far as I know there is no test anywhere in the world that can measure the degree of impairment by either alcohol or any other drug. Everybody responds to, and processes, drugs differently and therein lies the problem in trying to focus on impairment.

D&A Policies need to refer to the 'Risk of Impairment' and be focused on managing that risk.
While it may be argued that people should have the right to partake of recreational drugs in their own time, when that results in the person presenting for duty in a condition that poses a credible risk to themselves or others then employers have no option but to take action according to their D&A Policy. The most accurate evidence of a credible risk is the detectable presence of the drug in the body.

Another interesting question is how do we deal with positive test results. Our Policy has rehabilitation as its main focus, but when this fails to prevent a recurrence, dismissal is the usual remedy.

In answer to Michael's comment, salver testing may be more accurate, but it is a dead end at the moment as there is no accredited laboratory for the test in NZ. Comments from our staff (particularly the females) indicates they would find that less an invasion of their privacy than urine testing, so let's hope it becomes a viable option in the near future.

I would also like to take part

Like Steve above, we have learned to say NO as our ASNZS-4801 certification should be sufficient - surprisingly we have not lost a single job because of it. The clients have all come back to us and offered us an 'exemption' from their requirements!

Take 5 is good.
We use our own in-house system called a 'START Card' which is the same sort of concept.
I'm quite happy to share it with you if you contact me directly on brianpatmacmovedotcodotnz

I find it interesting that the focus of 'Safety Sensitive' appears to be towards physical safety. What about the safety of the business itself? When we implemented our D&A Policy 2 years ago we considered managers making business decisions 'under the influence' was a potential risk to the future viability of the business (due to either financial losses or legal sanctions). This is particularly important given the very high risk nature of all our operations in the heavy haulage sector. Seeing all their supervisors and managers included in the Policy certainly helped us gain our staff's acceptance of it.

We had an incident where a person who was legitimately monitoring their fleet vehicles on GPS noticed another manager's vehicle was parked at the residence of another staff member. The person insinuated there was 'something going on' when in fact he was doing some 'odd jobs' in his own time. This resulted in us writing a policy for information security and privacy. Tony, you contact me directly if you wish to have a copy. Email: brianpatmacmovedotcodotnz

Robyn's post raises some interesting issues, and maybe I'm taking the conversation down a side path - but an important one for the transport sector.
We have a rapidly aging workforce which is expanding - and yet has insufficient young people coming in to replace the existing drivers as they retire. All people's driving deteriorates over time for a multitude of reasons. In driver training we call this 'Slippage'. One important reason is the general lack of oversight and feedback. The deterioration in drivers' behaviours generally accelerates in their 50's. (reflect on your parents' driving for example). Again there are many reasons for this.
Some we need to consider are:
Reduced peripheral and focused vision (particularly in poor light), and hearing
A slowing down in mental processes means we take longer to make decisions, increasing reaction times
Deterioration in physical condition also leads to increased reaction times
More susceptible to 'Information Overload' leading to reduced 'Situational Awareness' and increased confusion, also affecting reaction times and increasing the incidence or 'Errors'
Shorter attention spans leads to reduced concentration and increasing the incidence or 'Errors'
More easily distracted also leads to reduced concentration and increasing the incidence or 'Errors'

Once these issues are detected and the driver is aware of how they affect their driving, they can be trained in techniques to enable them to cope with them - up to a point. This essentially means training them to 'drive to the conditions', where the dominant condition is now internal rather than external as we traditionally consider the term. I won't take up more space here discussing how to do this, but if you are interested you can contact me directly at brianpatmacmovedotcodotnz

So what are we doing about this at Specialised Lifting and Transport Group?
We conduct a pre-employment driving assessment to set a benchmark for the driver's skill level. Because all our work is considered 'High Risk', we don't employ low performing drivers. During their on boarding process we provide remedial training to correct the deficiencies we detected, and reassess after 1 month and 3 months to confirm they have integrated the changed behaviours into their driving. We then follow up with bi-annual on-job assessments that measure their performance over all aspects of their work - not just their driving. Any deficiencies are corrected with remedial coaching after each assessment.