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Safety learnings from construction

Kevin Jones 2015 — The author onsite earlier this year

I have recently finished some years of full-time work as a safety adviser on a range of construction projects in Australia and below is a list of some of what I have learnt (in no particular order).

Ask questions

People may initially think you are an idiot but, if you are genuinely interested, they will explain what they are doing (usually with some pride in their tone) and offer suggestions of how to do it better or safer.

Follow through

If you have said that you will look into an issue or provide additional information, do it. If you do not, your credibility with the worker you were talking with and, likely, their supervisor and workmates, is gone.

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Safety Culture can distract from safety management

Mohammad Rabbi has recently written that

“…safety culture is something that must permeate an entire organization. Its application largely depends on the investment, training, employee attitude, environment, location, laws, customs and practices in the industry. So how can organizations go about developing a safety culture?”

He is right that any safety culture has a wide range of business and social contexts but the quote, and the article, Workplace Safety Culture 101, seems to miss a couple of contextual realities. Many of these issues quoted appear to be basic elements of business and safety management and not dependent on safety culture programs.

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Coronial findings into level crossing fatalities released

Today the Victorian Coroner has released the findings into the 2007 Kerang rail disaster and other level crossing fatalities. SafetyAtWorkBlog has written about issues related to level crossings those articles may help when reading the many media articles that the inquest findings will generate.

Already family members of the Kerang victims have expressed their dissatisfaction with the findings. Continue reading “Coronial findings into level crossing fatalities released”

Engineering handbook progresses OHS management

Many safety professionals in Australia have become so familiar with the work of James Reason that they are looking for the next big thing. There isn’t one but there are small things that build on Reason’s work and, importantly, that of other safety theorists (the non-cheese sector) to progress safety management

Recently a colleague drew my attention to a 2013 handbook on Engineering Safety Management. It focuses on rail engineering but has a broader safety relevance. Both volumes of the handbook are freely available HERE.

The text may seem a little stilted and some may be turned off by the engineering focus but there is much to like and the engineering focus will seem fresh to the OHS professionals. There is an acknowledgement of the overlap in approaches between rail safety and OHS, an overlap that is increasing in Australia. Continue reading “Engineering handbook progresses OHS management”

New Zealand railways, red tape, politics and workplace deaths

On 28 April 2013, New Zealand lawyer, Hazel Armstrong, published a 48-page book on how workplace fatalities and the management of the NZ rail industry has been related to politics and economics.

This is an ideological position more than anything else and the evidence is thin in much of this short book but there is considerable power in the description of the manipulation of occupational health and safety regulations and oversight during the political privatisation of the NZ rail sector. Many countries have privatised previously nationalised, or government-owned, enterprises usually on the argument of productivity and efficiency increases. Armstrong argues that these arguments were used to justify breaking the trade union dominance of the rail industry. Continue reading “New Zealand railways, red tape, politics and workplace deaths”

An OHS look at the Australian Labor Party’s National Platform

The leadership squabbles in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) have diminished for the moment, and the next Federal election is set for September 2013. Most everyone is tipping the ALP to lose the election. The verb “lose” is specifically chosen, for the opposition Liberal/National coalition will probably win “by default”. Whatever the electoral outcomes, the major political parties in Australia have current positions and policies on workplace safety. Six months out from an election, it may be worth looking at those policies, as they currently stand. The first is that of the ALP.

The ALP has an extensive National Platform that was presented at its National Conference in 2012. Below are some of the statements from that document as they pertain to occupational health and safety (OHS). Some commentary is offered on these statements.

“The Labor Government places the highest priority on worker safety, particularly miner worker safety.” (page 42) Continue reading “An OHS look at the Australian Labor Party’s National Platform”

Reliance on PPE impedes safety progress

There is an increasing call for the mandatory wearing of high-visibility clothing for motorcycle riders around the world. The reason is to make motorcyclist more visible to car drivers and other road users. This sounds logical and sensible and is, in some way, based on the prominence of high-visibility clothing in the industrial sectors of manufacturing, construction and others. But is this a matter of policy based on evidence or a broad application of logic or a “common sense”?

As the requirement for high visibility clothing has been in workplaces longer than on motorcyclists it is worth looking for evidence of the effectiveness of high visibility clothing in workplaces. A brief survey of some of the research literature has been unsuccessful in locating much research into this issue. (We always welcome input from readers on this). Wikipedia traces high-visibility clothing back to Scottish railways in the early 1960s, where

“Train drivers operating in these areas were asked their opinion as to the effectiveness of the jackets.”

It would seem the choice of high visibility clothing has stemmed from assessing a workplace, determining the dominant colour of that workplace or environment and then examining the colour wheel (above) to choose a colour of the greatest contrast, thereby providing a high visibility. Continue reading “Reliance on PPE impedes safety progress”

Category: railway

Safety learnings from construction

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Reliance on PPE impedes safety progress

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