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‘This can cause confusion, frustration and sometimes cynicism for those struggling to deal with con icting policies, rules and on-site expectations.
‘This is not conducive to a cooperative, safe and healthy workplace. It also puts a signi cant additional workload on site supervisors, who have to induct newcomers to the house rules, expectations and on-site hazards as well as supervising everyone.
‘Our goal is that anyone going onto any commercial construction site in New Zealand can expect the same health and safety policies and procedures on things such as training and competence standards, personal protective equipment, access equipment and behaviours.’
Led by Rick, a group of representatives from each company will work towards eliminating some of the confusion and resulting frustration faced by subcontractors and employees.
‘By standardising our approach to managing health and safety risks, we bring our large workforce of subcontractors with us and make a step shift improvement,’ Rick said.
Priority areas identi ed
The companies involved have agreed to work together on several priority areas, including standard requirements for PPE, prequali- cation, alcohol and drug testing and certain high-risk activities.
A further key area is how to best ensure workers are fully engaged in their own and others’ health and safety. First up for review will be drug and alcohol testing and subcontractor prequali cation.
The group has also agreed to share their health and safety perfor- mance with each other and to standardise how this performance is measured so that better information on health and safety practice and improvement is available to all.
First decisions later this year
‘By joining forces, we will make safety practice easier on site and further reduce injury rates’, Rick said. ‘Only by working together and coordinating our approach to health and safety can we lead the required improvement in health and safety performance.’
The group expects to announce its rst decisions later this year. These initiatives will then be discussed and coordinated with the civil sector through the Construction Safety Council.
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