Guards around power tools or over moving parts of equipment (e.g. covers over compressor pulleys) are there for seriously good reasons. Injuries and deaths from people getting cut or caught in machinery keep happening all the time. It’s a common misunderstanding that bits of clothes caught in moving machinery can’t be that dangerous, after all … Continue reading “Guarding – last line of defence”
There’s an opportunity to follow the hearings of the Victorian Royal Commission on last summer’s horrendous bushfires via a live web stream. Here is the link to the Commission’s home page: http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/ The “live stream” link on that page takes you to a live broadcast of the hearings underway at the time. Fortunately, the catastrophe … Continue reading “Insights into crisis decision-making and communications – Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission”
I’m a big fan of minimising the rehashing of OH&S guides. In my WorkSafe Victoria days (the latter ones when I was doing guidance material editing) I did what I could to encourage adoption of other people’s good work. And just today I found an example of a British Health & Safety Executive (HSE) guide … Continue reading “What a good safety management system looks like”
Kevin’s stuff on the latest Safe Work Australia Awards got me thinking about an issue I have had a bee in me bonnet about for a while now. It’s safety innovation, and the glaring hole in Australia for support for the hardest innovation of the lot – safety product development. By “safety product” I’m specifically … Continue reading “Safety Innovation – doing the hard yards”
The tricky thing about getting safety right is making sure you are on top of where the dangers are. One danger that seems to be consistently “off the safety radar” for lots of workplaces, particularly small businesses, is falls. Here’s some key stuff you need to be looking at: Rule #1 for all safety problems … Continue reading “Falling under the safety radar”
An OHS colleague of mine, Col Finnie, has posted a comment to a recent SafetyAtWorkBlog article on depression. As I work out the technicalities of having Col as a regular contributor to this blog, I felt that his comment warranted a little more prominence. The original comment can be viewed HERE) I find the whole … Continue reading “Mandatory reporting of stress-related injuries”