In NSW a contractor was fined $450K following the death of a sub contractor who fell when laying suspended form work and was impaled on protruding bars. Whilst I have no difficulty with the site PC being held responsible for managing work at heights at the site. I am concerned that the Contractor was held … Read more
Whenever I post about contractor safety management someone inevitably pipes in that all WHS duties are non-delegable and therefore a Principal Contractor is liable for their contractors safety management. This is a myth (for a couple of reasons) and misunderstands the WHS Construction regulations in every jurisdiction. Under ALL WHS regulation the owner of a … Read more
WOSH Duty – identify operations that expose workers to Covid .e.g health care and implement reasonably practicable controls. 1 – eliminate exposure e.g. don’t take passengers in cab of tow truck/ work from home 2- isolate e.g. install physical barriers in a taxi 3 – substitute e.g. online/ telephone vs face to face 4 – … Read more
Under the banner of chain of responsibility employers in the transport industry are coercing transport operators and drivers to hand over personal and commercially sensitive information e.g. licenses, vehicle data and travel information, without any legal basis to do so. If you do this you are required to keep that information secure. If it leaks … Read more
A topic grabbing everyone’s attention at the moment is industrial manslaughter and as always fear is in the air. Principal Contractors may think the best course of action is to take more control of contractors operations when the opposite is needed. The more control you take the more liability you have. Make sure your contractors … Read more
Is the cacophony of legal noise around IM preventing us from seeing that the tools to manage it are already staring us in the face? Is the fear of IM going to drive regression into draconian, rule driven safety management practices? Should we abandon the movement away from progressive safety management? I am going to … Read more
I have just read in an opinion piece with the following comment “Other CoR parties’ (other than drivers and transport operators) maintenance responsibilities are only likely to be triggered where they observe a vehicle defect. In this case, their responsibilities are likely to involve not permitting the use of the unsafe or defective heavy vehicle … Read more
Engaging specialist 3rd party’s to assess and approve the safety arrangements of contractors is sadly quite common place these days (its a bit of a money spinner). Many of these companies offer services where they establish complex systems and criteria against which they asses contractor safety management. They collect contractor documentation, review it, go back … Read more
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On 24 October 2014 a worker lost his hand in an aluminium baler at SKM. I was the OHS Manager. How could this happen? The supplier was an expert engineer, they installed and commissioned the machine and trained operators. It was used exactly as intended and had all guarding in place. No incidents or near … Read more