RECENT NEWS

The NZ Herald recently had a couple of articles about a car versus a bus accident in Te Anau. The first photo I saw was the burnt wreck of both vehicles. However, the second article I saw showed the vehicles fully alight, flames leaping high, and black smoke filling the sky. The article read that the man inside the car was screaming for help. Around the same time, there was a fatal car versus train incident near Matamata. The photos, and story, about the Te Anau accident app

Recently I undertook site audits for a client who is helping with the Edgecumbe disaster recovery. It was very interesting to see the damage, and the clean-up which is underway. It was also heart breaking looking at the mess - the damaged houses were somebody’s pride and joy. Whilst I was in Edgecumbe, I heard a lot of people saying that no one could have predicted the floods. That may be true, but, as business owners or managers we should be identifying the potential emerge

There are many things that an employer or manager does to ensure the safety of their workers; remember that workers include contractors, sub-contractors and other people. Some of these things are: Induction – making sure workers know about how we do health and safety in our organisation. Training – making sure workers know the best and safest way to do their tasks. Supervision – providing an experienced worker to watch over a worker who may be new, or new to the task.

PCBUs PCBU means person conducting a business or undertaking. This is the entity of the business, so Safewise is a PCBU. It is not a person unless the business is a sole trader. The current act says the employer must provide a safe place of work but in the new Health and Safety at Work 2015 Act the PCBU has the primary duty of care for the health and safety of workers and others in the workplace. As far as is reasonably practicable they must: Provide and maintain safe p

There is a lot to think about when we are working. We need to be sure that we are doing the job to the best of our abilities: quality, efficiency, and safely. Often we are focused on the task and presume that other people around us are aware of how and what we are doing.. However, this is not always the case. It is easy to assume that, because we understand our job very well, other people have the same knowledge. This is seldom the case. It can help to know what types of pe

Last month we discussed reasonably practicable steps. The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 talks a lot about doing what is reasonably practicable. It requires that an organisation does what any other organisation would be expected to reasonably do. Let’s look at an example which can be quite common in the transport industry – overloading. Firstly, we will assume that the transport operator does not want to have overloaded vehicles. Consider what are the ways the vehicles ca