Safety Officers

Joined: 21 Aug 2006 Location: nowhere interesting

Safety officers can certainly be of value, but unfortunately I think most of them are too scared about their butt being on the line if an incident occurs to allow common sense to prevail.

My example is working on a subdivisional construction site as Site Manager. We had a couple of pumping manholes open (1500 diameter, around 7m deep). Obviously they were fenced off with fencing panels when we weren't working on them, but during they day they were left open if they had been worked on at all. So you could quite commonly find one open with nobody there, at smoko etc.

Safety officer didn't pick that up as a hazard until I requested at a toolbox meeting that the guys lay a temporary fencing panel down over the top of manholes if they were leaving them open. The safety officer at that point, having said nothing about the open manholes, then demanded that we develop a JSA and handling procedure for 'installing' the fence panels over the manhole Rolling Eyes

That's where safety procedures annoy me - I feel it's better that people keep their eyes open and wits about them rather than just blindly following an established procedure that may not account for varying site conditions.

Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Location: Melbourne

Sounds like the mines are full of complete a/holes on both sides.

At the end of the day practicality and yes "money" are considerations when it comes to safety. A parked dragline sounds like a lot of money going down the drain.

As for their butts being on the line, what do you mean?
As a general rule directors of companies can go to jail for serious breach of safety, employees can't.

If you mean their jobs are on the line, then blame the company that employs them and drives their direction re safety on the site.

Like all professions/trades nazis will exist, I hate IT nazis personally, they should be taken out back and flogged, daily.

But would you prefer to be putting up with the odd safety nazi, or would you prefer to be climbing up that dragline arm or crane arm with no safety devices because their is no safety regime in place to protect you.

Safety officer didn't pick that up as a hazard until I requested at a toolbox meeting that the guys lay a temporary fencing panel down over the top of manholes if they were leaving them open. The safety officer at that point, having said nothing about the open manholes, then demanded that we develop a JSA and handling procedure for 'installing' the fence panels over the manhole

Safety officers are not expected to see every danger on the site, that's why work safe and legislation demands that companies engage their staff regarding safety. I would also be putting a JSA in place if you had brought the same issue to my attention, I would also issue a safety alert, and a task document that clearly dictated how the team responsible for safety were to ensure the safety issue was communicated to everyone who needed to know and the method of preventing the safety issue re occuring clearly communicated as well.

I don't think that makes me a nazi, I would simply be using the resources at my disposal to do my job as well as I could.

Out of interest do these mine sites have HSRs, HSCs and DWGs?

Cheers

Joined: 21 Aug 2006 Location: nowhere interesting

Struth wrote:

But would you prefer to be putting up with the odd safety nazi, or would you prefer to be climbing up that dragline arm or crane arm with no safety devices because their is no safety regime in place to protect you.

I'd rather see employees who stay aware of their surroundings and know they have the support and resources of their company behind them to take appropriate measures to protect themselves and their workmates.

My point is that when employees recognise a dangerous situation and implement a strategy to protect themselves (ie laying down a fence panel over a manhole) then why should this precipitate a mile-long paper trail that makes everyone's job more difficult, resulting eventually in a general attitude of contempt for over-zealous safety regs (refer this poll...)?

In my current role, my team know that they have my complete support to refuse to enter any environment they are not comfortable with, and that any expenditure on safety equipment or training will be reimbursed without a quibble. We see that as far more valuable than trying to identify and create a written procedure for every one of the varied risks that we may encounter each day as forensic engineers. And given that we encounter new risks on a daily basis, it would be impossible to account for all possible circumstances.

I'm all for companies, managers and staff being highly safety conscious. No project is worth human life or injury. But safety in my book is an alert mind, relevant training and appropriate equipment - not a procedure manual.

No offence meant Struth re safety officers - as I said in my original post, safety officers certainly can be of value. Their presence on site can heighten safety awareness (eg safety alerts - great), ensure relevant training is provided, and recommend appropriate equipment. It's just the never-ending JSA's and work procedures I have difficulty with.

Joined: 09 Mar 2004 Location: NSW

Struth wrote:

At the end of the day practicality and yes "money" are considerations when it comes to safety. A parked dragline sounds like a lot of money going down the drain.

What makes it worse is they flog to death that there is no excuse for short cutting anything. They rant and rave that if something needs to be parked up for some time before something is made safe, then that's what needs to be done. When push comes to shove though, that goes out the window and it all comes down to money.

Another funny mine example. You need to go through a course to become an authorized isolator of equipment, you can't isolate anything until you've been deemed competent by them by doing said course/induction. Perfectly fine, after all you want knowledgeable people doing correct isolations. Reality is, you could be an absolute expert on a particular piece of equipment but not allowed to do the isolation, whilst you're standing there with an authorized isolator who's scratching his head how to do it, as he has never touched one before. They then just get you to do it, but by their rules it's a breach of safety procedures.

I've been in said situation, the authorized isolator performed an isolation and said it was fine, i walked straight up to it to put my lock on and noticed it wasn't right at all.

Another site wrote up an isolation procedure for the equipment i worked on. It was completely wrong and didn't provide a positive isolation. They tried pinging me on it because i did it differently to the procedure. They couldn't accept that their isolation procedure was wrong because it was their safety gurus who wrote it. I'd just been working on the stuff for 10 years, i was hardly an expert on it. As far as i am aware, that procedure is still wrong and the people who work on it don't follow it because of that reason.

Joined: 11 Jan 2004 Location: Adelaide

love_mud wrote:

I got in trouble for using a non tagged device the other day by the OH&S Nazi... A USB hard drive.

At the last place I worked, every month a different engineer was nominated to perform a safety audit of the engineering department. Said engineer came to my "workspace" (coincidentally across the corridor from the Safety Manager's office) and asked me if I was aware of any safety issues.

I pointed out that my electric/scanning whiteboard hadn't been tested & tagged for a number of years.

Their solution? Take away the detachable power cord. I pointed out that the cupboards above my desk were filled with more cords, but they didn't see any relevance. I don't think they understood what testing and tagging is about. Laughing

Joined: 11 Jan 2004 Location: Adelaide

r0ck_m0nkey wrote:

What makes it worse is they flog to death that there is no excuse for short cutting anything. They rant and rave that if something needs to be parked up for some time before something is made safe, then that's what needs to be done. When push comes to shove though, that goes out the window and it all comes down to money.

Interesting point - I'd like Barnsey's opinion here.

Our Quality System allows "concessions" if there is a valid reason for doing so, as long as it's all documented - the concessions made, and the reasons they were made. For example, drawings were released without "normal" reviews because the client set ridiculous deadlines for the project (actually, a politician set ridiculous deadlines for the client, after making rash promises to the media... Rolling Eyes

)

Is there an equivalent concession process in Safety Systems? Are "unique" processes acceptable under "special" circumstances, if sufficiently senior and/or experienced officers (in r0ck_m0nkey's example, "Shift Supervisor, Open Cut Examiner and Mine Manager") are present to witness/authorise/direct etc?

Joined: 09 Mar 2004 Location: NSW

-Scott- wrote:

Our Quality System allows "concessions" if there is a valid reason for doing so, as long as it's all documented - the concessions made, and the reasons they were made. For example, drawings were released without "normal" reviews because the client set ridiculous deadlines for the project (actually, a politician set ridiculous deadlines for the client, after making rash promises to the media... Rolling Eyes

)

It depends on the mine also.

As another example, at another site, where an Excavator had an issue. I went to it after already doing 8 hours, worked an additional 6 and got to 14 hours for the day, the problem wasn't resolved so a risk assessment was done, i went for the extra 2 hours and was supervised up to 16 hours. At that point it was around midnight, i pulled the pin and went home. 10 hours later i went back to it and the machine hadn't moved an inch since i left it, an hour later the job was done and the machine went back to work. It was never an issue that it had to be parked that extra time whilst i had my 10 hour break. Got a big thank you from those in charge for the effort i put in and everything was sweet.

Stupidly, that was a site which takes it's safety seriously, but have a relaxed attitude about things and don't have Nazi Safety Officers running around trying to ping anyone and everyone.

Joined: 13 Nov 2004

The main problem seems to be that establishing a safe working environment involves getting people to change their attitudes. Many [most?] OH&S professionals have an engineering background. They can only see engineering solutions. They put a guard on a press and can't imagine why a press operator would go to a lot of trouble to disable it! Rolling Eyes

Joined: 17 Sep 2004 Location: Melbourne

In my short experiences most safety officer's tend to overlook stuff depending on the consequence it's going to have on the site... the longer the downtime, the more it's over looked. but if it's something that work cover will pick straight up, they are red hot.

If there was an independant body for "safety" rather than company appointed safety rep's, things would work alot nicer.

I also beleive alot of blokes dont have the balls to stand up for themselves for fear of retribution from their boss. whether it be just being moved to a small site, or lose their OT or even little trivial shite

Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Location: North West Qld

Burnside wrote:

The main problem seems to be that establishing a safe working environment involves getting people to change their attitudes. Many [most?] OH&S professionals have an engineering background. They can only see engineering solutions. They put a guard on a press and can't imagine why a press operator would go to a lot of trouble to disable it! Rolling Eyes

I think OH&S people should be trained in "people skills"...........can't think of a better term for it.

The point of my rant was that Safety is focused on systems and compliance to systems, and Safety Officers are often safety compliance police. All this does is encourage dickheads into the safety "profession" and alienates the workforce from management. Safety becomes a game of cat and mouse.

I'm not saying that safety systems are bad..............far from it. Yes you SHOULD wear a harness working at heights, and read the JSA........it's all good stuff.

A certain BHP mine is reputed to have the tightest and most thorough safety systems in Australia.........massive inductions / training, take 5's JSA risk assessments, drug tests ..........yet they've had 2 fatalities in the last 2 years.

Maybe we all need to look at our reliance on "systems" and the sort of people we employ to enforce it.

The way forward is to look at how we manage people.

Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Location: Melbourne

Burnside wrote:

The main problem seems to be that establishing a safe working environment involves getting people to change their attitudes. Many [most?] OH&S professionals have an engineering background. They can only see engineering solutions. They put a guard on a press and can't imagine why a press operator would go to a lot of trouble to disable it! Rolling Eyes

Yep there are engineers out there who get involved in safety and only make the issues worse regarding employees attitude to safety.

I worked with one when building and designing machinery, critical to us as designers of the machinery was the need to prevent people getting hurt, after all the blame would quickly come back to us if our machines killed someone.

The engineer was all for simple cost effective and basic berrier guarding that did make the equipment more cumbrsome and time consuming to use, albeit safe. Engineers are by the book types, if it hasn't or can't be calculated with a slide rule, it can't be done.

My role was more as an industrial designer, as such I knew that if the safety placed into a piece of plant wasn't user friendly then that plant would not be particularly efficient or productive, operators have to enjoy using or prefer to use your kit.

So we went to a methodology of more state of the art and expensive safety gear will make the machine more productive and efficient, hence we can justify the extra costs.

As said engineers are simple folk, not inventors or great thinkers outside the square by any stretch of the imagination and not the best people to place in safety roles.

At the top of the chain is where a companies safety strategy develops, you need someone able to think outside the square, within the rules, and communicate the safety message properly.

Cheers

Joined: 21 Oct 2005 Location: virginia, brisbane

where i work we have had a major shift in our safety system. 6 years ago we had some major incidents (electric shocks and fatalities) within 4 or 5 months, we had an overhaul with the introduction of electrical safety non-negotiables, work method statements and more procedures developed. all had been running sweet until about 12 months ago. out of the blue it seemed everyone dropped the ball and we had a fatality and numerous electrical shocks and lost time injuries. the reaction initially was to bring in more and more paperwork and procedural texts. this had the immediate effect of making the workers pissed off, and become more blasé about safety. this in turn led to a further increase in lost time injuries. the safety gods at our work have brought in a new survey to look at workers safety attitudes, and i think that is where it lays, the attitude of the worker. i know some guys i work with are so over the amount of paperwork they need to do that they take further shortcuts than they used to. this will end up with an injury eventually.

i guess what im trying to say is that paperwork isn't the be all and end all of safety management and the onus needs to be pushed back onto the worker to just use their heads.

another problem is our workplace safety officers are rotated through different areas, this is for their development, but the problem is that they do it every 6 months, so they never have enough time to address safety issues effectively.

Joined: 06 Apr 2007 Location: Cambridge Park

Wow, quite a discussion going on!

I work for a big company in the steel industry, which over the years has killed hundreds of people... Older guys I work with all know someone who has been killed, not to mention others who have been permanently disfigured, injured etc...

Workplace safety is pretty anal at my place, and I can see how a lot of you have reservations about it, but we are coming out the other side now, where none of the policies are new anymore, we just take them for granted, and work the way we have to, which is to work as safely as possible.

Don;t think that injuries don;t happen though, they do - but they are smaller ones like small finger cuts or RSI... Not broken limbs or burns etc.

It is working now - our current stat is .6 injuries per million hours worked.

I used to work in construction, and safety guys were seen to just be getting in the way of people trying to get their job done, and most were (and are) c unts, and I used to have run ins, like every one else with them... But I also had way more injuries.

I think as long as they go about their job the right way, then they are doing good things.

Joined: 26 May 2008 Location: Cobar

at work,we have this carpet,it has a huge lump under it from all the stuff swept under it.only certain people are trained to lift the carpet,not everyone can do it. Very Happy

Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Location: Brisbane

r0ck_m0nkey wrote:

Barnsey wrote:

My view is that these safety systems actually create hazards. We're all too busy COMPLYING with what we have to do, instead of looking at more important things like having jobs adequately resourced with manpower and equipment.

I won't mention company names, but we can just assume one operates a mine mentioned recently in this thread Laughing

, but there are a few mining companies in the Hunter Valley that come to mind. One thinks it's at the forefront of safety and the other wishes they were them by trying to catch up. Of both those companies, they continually have consistent injuries and accidents in the workforce. Some others that have taken safety on board, but haven't gone over the top Nazi style have relatively few and when they have them are generally minor.

Here's a great safety incentive. Offer monetary bonuses to people who can spot and dob in others who are doing something wrong. It works great, just ask those responsible for implementing it at one particular place that did just this, it really helped safety. No wait, instead of people pulling others up because they could see something was going wrong, they waited for them to do it and then ran to report their find and get their bonus, all the while that other person is still out there doing the wrong thing.

Quite a few places in Hunter Valley are questionable with safety.

Any site that considers hand guesters as positive communication, graders can be overtaken without any contact as long as the blade is on the ground and light vehicles being allowed to overtake Haul trucks and having right of way at unmarked intersections is just asking for trouble.
At last count they had 9 LTI's this FY and they claim to be big on safety Rolling Eyes

Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Location: North West Qld

Chucky wrote:

light vehicles being allowed to overtake Haul trucks and having right of way at unmarked intersections :

Joined: 05 Aug 2005 Location: morayfield

I had a BIR done on me last week at work by the contractors safety officer for not having my safety glasses on. Now it was night work steamy conditions and glasses kept fogging up so i took them off and put them on top of my helmet. He turns up has a winge and dose a BIR on me.
Now what is safer having glasses on that fog up and i cant see what i am doing or having them off so i can see what i am doing.

Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Location: Brisbane

Barnsey wrote:

Chucky wrote:

light vehicles being allowed to overtake Haul trucks and having right of way at unmarked intersections :

I was told normal road rules apply.

FARK THAT Shocked

440T truck against 3t cruiser, result wont be pretty. (There's an induction video that shows the result).

This is the same site that by simple watering the haul road causes the haul trucks to slide down the ramp at a 45 degree angle and only 300m blast clearance zones Confused

Joined: 29 Aug 2005 Location: western shitney

whats BIR?

Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Location: North West Qld

Chucky wrote:

Barnsey wrote:

Chucky wrote:

light vehicles being allowed to overtake Haul trucks and having right of way at unmarked intersections :

I was told normal road rules apply.

FARK THAT Shocked

440T truck against 3t cruiser, result wont be pretty. (There's an induction video that shows the result).

This is the same site that by simple watering the haul road causes the haul trucks to slide down the ramp at a 45 degree angle and only 300m blast clearance zones Confused

Sounds like the hillbilly mine I was working at last year and half of this year.

At Christmas,last year, I got the shits with it, and laid down the law to the SSE.

They demoted me to truck driver (777s and 785s) ..........call you back into safety when we need you. They recruited a safety bloke from a mine nearby that had recently closed, who's main purpose in life was to wear spiffy "Leo Wanker" overalls and practice mines rescue, while ignoring the need to actually prevent having to do rescues and first aid in the first place.

I hear on the grape vine, they still haven't managed to crack the magical 20 days LTI free record they set in 2006.

Anyway, I know what it's like to skid 50 meters in a 785 dumpy on an over watered ramp. It's inexcusable, and bloody dangerous.

I think I made a point about the basics of safety a page or two ago.

Basics = good equipment, good training, good supervision and good management.

None of these existed in that mine.

I'm happier where I am.

Joined: 01 Jul 2007 Location: gold coast as of 2009

barnseys just pissed he cant drink and work at the same time Very Happy

Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Location: North West Qld

defmec wrote:

barnseys just pissed he cant drink and work at the same time Very Happy

Can so..........did a great powerpoint presentation at home last week end on LV accidents (full of 4x) and it went down a treat with the punters on "training day"...........(Thanks Montana for your help)

Joined: 07 Aug 2003 Location: Townsville

Barnsey wrote:

Basics = good equipment, good training, good supervision and good management.

......and common sense.

If it looks suss, it probably is.