Planning health and safety

Clearly written health and safety plans can have multiple advantages for your business and are a practical way of proving you have effective methods to identify and control hazards

Proper planning can help you identify better ways to complete tasks, reveal other smart ideas for your workplace and provide evidence you are fulfilling your legal obligations, as required by Section 7 of the Health and Safety in Employment Act.

Before starting a construction task, put together a health and safety job plan. The following tools will help. They can be found in the Site Specific Safety Plan, which is free to download from www.sitesafe.org.nz/SSSP.

Hazard Register

Identify:

• What’s really dangerous?
• What’s something that could really happen because of the work you’re doing?

Assess:

• Think about each hazard and ask: Is it significant? What’s the likelihood of it happening?

Control:

• How is your business going to make sure that the people in and around your workplace stay safe from the hazards you’ve identified?
• Have you thought about the basics – personal protective equipment (PPE), signage and plant needed?
• Are the controls you’ve considered the best approach?
• Could you remove the hazard completely by doing the task differently?

Task analysis

The ‘task analysis’ is used when the hazard is assessed as ‘significant’. The significant hazard presents a degree of risk and needs a formal approach to deal with it. Make sure you check that everything is written down, easy to understand and up to date.

Other free tools to help with H&S job planning:

• Site Specific Safety Plan Checklist
• Pre-start Site Assessment
• Self-Safety Inspection Checklist

“Planning to do a job safely in construction is something that should never be rushed. The more time you spend on planning, the less time you need to spend on fixing mistakes, or worse

Be up with the play

Be as informed as possible. At all stages of hazard management, you should try to get more information about the task and the place where it will be done. Enlist help from health and safety experts. Ask your team for their thoughts, to make sure you have a full understanding of all the hazards and possible controls.

Christmas rush

Planning to do a job safely in construction is something that should never be rushed. The more time you spend on planning, the less time you need to spend on fixing mistakes, or worse. At the end of the year, we want everyone safe and well and enjoying the Christmas season.

Want more help? Contact Site Safe:

Local Site Safe Advisors www.sitesafe.org.nz/advisors

‘Site Specific Safety Plan’ training (Advanced Passport) – www.sitesafe.org.nz/training

0800 SITE SAFE (748 372)