I also agree with Ian.
Applying rigorous research will yield evidence to inform policy but, as an academic, I admit a conflict of interest!
Some of my wish-list research titles follow.
How can small and medium-sized businesses be helped to integrate better business practices with effective OHS?
How can messages about OHS and productivity reach the PCBUs that are hard to reach?
Contracting with large PCBUs to manage OHS in their suppliers and customers: possibilities, costs and benefits.
Helping sector groups to develop their own OHS standards: possibilities, costs and benefits.
Worker fatigue at the margins of the economy: who pays, who should pay?
Are there common factors that link victims of workplace harm? [NB: this is not the same as so-called accident-prone people]

I recall a UK client whose sites were so large that cycling was the only safe way to get around. There were strict controls on ignition sources that all but prohibited the use of vehicles with internal combustion engines.

This was an awful story. Drowning in liquid waste was a ghastly way to die.
It's worth reading the UK Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 (attached) to see a variation on the hierarchy of control. I'll place it in my teaching alongside the NZ legislation, ISO31000 and Haddon barrier approaches.
Essentially, the Regulations prohibit entry unless there is no other way of carrying out a task but then explicitly requires an emergency plan.

Hi Sheri
You have raised some very good issues here that I suspect will be worse on some sites where there are non-workers who often will have no training in evacuation. Under the old "normal" the wardens would ensure evacuation but now? I am thinking of retail shop customers, students on a large campus, etc.
There was a fire in a Littlewoods department store in the UK in the 1980s when a couple who had bought their lunch in the cafeteria sat eating despite the alarm and then smoke. They died.
While the main legal requirement for evacuation is under the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017 and Regulations I think we also need to pay attention to sections 36 and 37 HSWA. What would it practicable to do and would that be reasonable?
Thank you!
Chris

Hi Aaron
Some brief thoughts.
You must comply with the Privacy Act (ie, not disclose any personal information). If the filming shows 'workers' at work they may need to give their consent, even if they are carrying out business as usual activities.
If a camera is fitted to allow filming outside a helicopter or other vehicle this might prohibit sharing film showing a third party without the consent of the third party. However, filming in a public space seems to be legally acceptable.
Maybe fit plain English notices where they can be seen that tell workers, passengers, etc, that they may be filmed in the course of this journey.
Take care to not disclose any commercially sensitive information unwittingly, for example voice over when someone describes a planned property transaction.
A regulatory agency may have the power to require production of recordings and you may want to comply with such a request via your lawyer.
I suggest you draft a plain English policy in consultation with your own workers and then ask your lawyer to tidy up with 'shall', 'must', 'must not', etc where appropriate. But keep it plain English!
Sorry this is a bit terse.
Chris

The numbers of deaths are not just 50-60 per year. New Zealand is killing 900-1000 people at or because of work each year. About 50-60 are due to trauma but, historically, most deaths were due to disease (eg, asbestosis) but I think an emerging issue may now be fatigue.
Port workers work shifts 24/7, 365 days per year. Some are (or have been) on zero hours contracts. Add to the mix vehicles (fork lift trucks, straddle cranes, heavy goods vehicles, etc) moving shipping containers in, into and out of ports and there may be a lethal cocktail.
Deaths in the Ports will be the subject of the next NZISM webinar when we may also have a guest speaker.

Hi Riki
Your question begs questions.
Do you mean you are completing the diploma at undergraduate or postgraduate level?
Do you want to study at undergraduate level or postgraduate level?
Do you want to study face-to-face or online?
Some thoughts.
At Victoria University of Wellington one of our postgraduate students researched OHS decisions in the District Court over a 10-year period comparing prosecutions for traumatic injury with prosecutions for occupational health/disease. She added to a database of cases we have been developing and that needs completion. This was her research report for completion of part B of her Masters.
Another student has completed part A of the Master's programme (= the postgraduate diploma) and, instead of carrying out a research report, is working on a Master's by thesis researching aspects of OHS law in NZ. He will also draw on the now-expanded database.
A year ago we started exploring an option for a postgraduate paper to be developed jointly with the Law School for lawyers, managers and OHS practitioners to be run as a “summer school”. However, the project must wait until we have the staff, funding, and demand. Does this sound like what you want?
Happy to talk on the phone (0274713723) or by Zoom
Chris
Lecturer in Occupational Health and Safety

Working as an academic, no, not at a personal level.
But as a long-time OHS consultant and academic, each newspaper report of a workplace fatality, and each court case following a traumatic death grieves me. Each means that whanau have lost someone they loved. Children may grow up not knowing a father or sibling; parents may bury a child.
Pike River still makes me downright angry. We the country accepted poor legislation, and an underfunded regulator. It took 29 deaths to make the major changes and we still have a journey to travel.
And well done Michael! That is an excellent result. Can you share your critical success factors? What can others learn from you?

Hi all
Nobody else has mentioned section 28 of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

Sarah started this conversation with a question about "events", not risk. If we must discuss risk, use the ISO definition of risk: "effect of uncertainty on objectives". Ask how uncertain someone is. Or how certain they are. Or use a simple word, how sure are you? This does wonders for nailing down how uncertain people are - how little they actually know.
Learn to use probability. Ask for a consensus view about ranges. "Are you 90-95% sure this tank will fail in the next 10 years?"
Gather data about similar events of concern. Why did they happen? What's different.
Don't use likelihood words. They mean whatever a reader wants them to mean. Or as Lewis Carroll wrote:
“When I use a word”, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” (p 196, Through the Looking-Glass).

I'm very glad the construction industry doesn't worry about the triangles.
Yes, Heinrich (and Bird) worked in the insurance industry and got their data from reports filed by clients.
It is easy to overlook the difference that technology has made to our lives. In the 1930-1990 period computerisation of OHS data was generally not practicable. Computers did not exist or were too expensive and mostly used for the "important" financial analyses. Things are different now. The computer I'm writing this on may have more power than NASA had for the whole space programme in the 1960s.
But one problem remains - the willingness of workers to report incidents, regardless of their outcomes. That is exacerbated by subsequent access to the "data capture system" and limitations imposed by the categories it uses that we (the authors of the system) impose on the reporters. The longer the time between event and reporting, the more the event will have become "unforeseeable" leading to the need to adjust the facts. That can also be exacerbated by fear of the event being investigated. And that the reporter may be a manager, not the victim. Whose story is correct?
Last night I started updating my teaching materials for 2022 and read chapter 4 in Sydney Dekker's book "Foundations of Safety Science". The chapter is worth a read. It nicely skewers ideas about ratios.
PS: Critical risks often get so much attention that minor risks can eventuate and cause major damage.

Hi all,
I remember discovering the Bird & Loftus book in the 1980s.
Wow! the triangle answered so many problems. Armed with it I could save lives and clients would love me!
More recently (five years ago) I've thought critically about the Bird triangle and accident ratios. Please read the attached and tell me if you think we can use ratios and triangles.
I've updated the note and it now forms part of my teaching at Victoria University of Wellington.

I've taught people to use bow ties and often seen how the penny drops when a team of managers and workers collaborate. Simply using post it notes on a glass wall can be very powerful. The process can break down barriers and remove the work-as-imagined/work-as-done problem.
Once done with Post-it notes the results can be drawn with a graphics package and used regularly to discuss changes.
Used as an engagement process bow ties can be powerful. Simply drawing them and making the risk register look fancy is a waste of time.
I've also integrated bow tie analysis into teaching an overall risk assessment process that now forms part of one of the Master's papers I teach at Victoria University

Glad to give an idea.
I'm hoping a special edition of New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations will be published in the next week or two. It's open access and contains an article on OHS in young workers, the safe system of work and a preliminary report on an analysis of cases under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015-now.
More on this when it's out.

In the UK directors can be disqualified for a period of years and blocked from taking part in the management of a business. This has been used for serial or reckless offences under the UK HSWA.
The NZ Companies Act section 383 is nearly the same but requires the offence to be one where a director can be imprisoned for 3 months. Only section 47 HSWA (reckless behaviour) would apply.
Sections 137 & 138 of the NZ Companies Act require directors to discharge a duty of care and use reliable advice. If you line up these two sections with section 44 HSWA you see they are quite similar.
Section 138A covers "serious breaches" of section 138.
Sorry, this is written in haste. I'd love to see an article by a lawyer that draws together the above. It would also be good for section 383 to apply to directors under the HSWA for offences other than reckless behaviour.

I think I'm right to say that ISO9001 Quality Management was the first International Standards Organization standard for a management system. It morphed into the framework for all management system standards, known "in the trade" as annex SL. That forms part of a 700+ pages document on developing and publishing management system standards. For example, ISO45001 was developed using annex SL. Thus, if PCBU has an ISO9001 quality management system it is a relatively short step to incorporate the OHS material required under ISO45001. Management system standards are generally auditable but, in ISO45001, read clause 0.5 and notice that a PCBU can make a self-declaration of conformance.
ISO31000 was first published in 2009 and was pretty good. When reissued in 2018 it had been revised to remove material that now appears in annex SL and, thus, management system standards. It includes brief guidance on integration and complements the management system standards.
As mentioned above, if a standard is cited in Regulations it is enforceable but, as far as I know, none of the management system standards are cited.
Personally, I go the integrated management system approach and that is what I teach at Victoria University of Wellington. That makes it possible to bring in the International Electrotechnical Commission standards on reliability of (in the broadest sense) equipment and human factors. Done well, an integrated system can be understood by auditors, either in its entirety or just the system they are auditing.
If anyone is looking for a continuing professional development option come and study paper HLWB507 Health and Safety Management at Victoria as a way of widening horizons. Actually, have a look at all the offerings for post graduate certificate or diploma or the Master's degree.

None of the above would avoid a charge under section 45(b) of the Health and Safety at Work Act if an occupational health and safety advisor/manager/consultant/person did not take reasonable care that their acts or omissions did not adversely affect the health and safety of other people.
An in-house advisor/manager is just a worker by another name and is caught by 45(b).
A consultant may be a sole trader (=worker) or work in a small and medium-sized business but is then a PCBU.
In a case in Ashburton (WorkSafe NZ v Precision Animal Supplements Ltd) a safety consultant got some very poor comments from the judge and I think was lucky that WorkSafe did not prosecute them.
And a recent event leads me to believe that a lawyer acting improperly for their client so causing considerable stress for other people could fall foul of section 45(b). As could an engineer whose poor design results in harm. Or a traffic controller in road works (although the case in question ended up in the Employment Court).
I count three successful prosecutions under 45(b) of workers and one under the Health and Safety in Employment Act that would now fall under 45(b)
I have several short articles on the above from NZ and the UK that my Master's students will be discussing during a block course next week.
Moral: get qualified and do your job competently.

A few bulleted comments:
Design of a matrix

• Some matrices were "found on Google" or got from a friend in a different industry
• A risk matrix cannot be designed to accommodate all the possible data points
• Some designers will design a matrix to make sure it gives the results they want
• Most matrices I have seen use a likelihood scale using words such as "quite likely"; each user will interpret such words differently.
• A better approach is to use ranges of probabilities (eg, 60-80%) but numbers scare many people and they prefer to use words to fudge the results
• Asking for a single matrix to cover all situations is like going to a clothing shop to buy the one-size-fits-all trousers ("Guaranteed to fit all women, men and children").

Use of a matrix

• Each user or group will be concerned about the views of executive management and so will skew the results to give give an acceptable result and avoid adverse comment
• Each user of a matrix will have different biases and experiences, so each result will be purely personal
• Matrices look scientific so people believe they are accurate
• Matrices are used for analysis without actually analysing the possible consequences and the probability of each consequence.
• They are only really useful for reporting that one risk is greater or smaller than another (IEC/ISO31010 Risk management - Risk assessment techniques downgraded the matrix from an analysis tool to a reporting tool)

When we grow up we might accept that risk is about uncertainty. But that's a big word so flip the sentiment and use a short word.
SURE.
Get managers to ask "How sure are you that nobody will be harmed in this activity?" Anything less than 80-90% sure will not be acceptable to a judge.
And stop using the matrix.
I wrote most of this (and then some) in an academic article published in 2017.
Peace, C. (2017). The risk matrix: uncertain results? Policy and Practice in Health and Safety, 15(2), 131-144. https://doi.org/10.1080/14773996.2017.1348571

GSI Direct is an Auckland-based insurance broker that places cover with underwriters, including Lloyds of London. The word "Direct" in their name is therefore something of a misnomer.
Over an 18-year period I had good experiences with Aon and then with Meridian as brokers. Aon was very good when I notified them of a possible claim (nothing to do with OHS) and that experience reinforced for me why we need professional indemnity cover for possible poor advice. The cover included legal expenses which could easily run to many thousands of dollars.
We also need public liability cover (just in case of damage to property owned by someone else) and statutory liability insurance for legal expenses if prosecuted under the Health and Safety at Work Act or other legislation.
I was paying a total of about $2,500 per year and was assured that this was the minimum premium for the range of work I carried out (OHS was one component of that).
Start with the NZISM broker. They know what OHS practitioners do, in-house and as consultants.

Check out the decision in WorkSafe NZ v Rentokil Initial Limited in 2016. The following are extracts from the decision in the District Court. (Suppressed was the name of the employee). The full decision can be downloaded from the Chief Judge of the DC website.
"[18] In 2007 the defendant established a policy requiring candidates for specific roles, including [suppressed], to be tested to establish whether they were immune to Hepatitis B as part of the pre-employment screening process. If the candidate was not immune to Hepatitis B, the defendant would offer the candidate Hepatitis B vaccination."
"[24] Upon investigation by WorkSafe, it was established that [suppressed] and one other employee, who started in 2014, were not offered vaccination against Hepatitis B at the outset of their employment."