Tap into Safety Dr Sue Bahn

Managing workplace hazards in the construction industry is a top priority every day because the working environment constantly changes.  There are often many different contractors working alongside each other. It becomes more complex in multi-storey construction, where work is carried out over several levels. Injury and fatality rates in construction remain high.

Safe Work Australia report that in 2013–14, the construction industry accounted for 9% of the workforce. However, the sector was responsible for 12% of the total work-related fatalities for that year. In 2012–13 the construction industry had the 4th highest injury rate. In 2013-14 the industry had the 5th highest fatality rate. 

In this podcast, we discuss the top workplace hazards in the construction industry to guide your safety training themes.

There's a considerable focus on strategies to help workplaces dealing with mental health issues and the pandemic is placing pressure on them to do more. In the past, the focus has been on establishing that supporting the mental health of our employees is actually a workplace issue, rather than placing that in the realm of the individual's personal responsibility. Today, we are keen to learn what organisations are doing to support worker mental health, why they are doing it and their experiences of managing mental health issues in their workplace.

For this podcast, we discuss some research, published last year, that investigates how Australian workplaces are dealing with mental health, the range of initiatives they are using and the barriers they encounter when introducing support programmes.

Occupational Health and Safety Professionals are required to draw on their ethics to make life-threatening decisions and act as 'moral' agents in their role. This is a particularly difficult task given they are bound by legal obligations to ensure a safe workplace and eliminate risk as far as reasonably practicable and at the same time support their company to ensure productivity and profit.

This podcast discusses a chapter from the Body of Knowledge on Ethics and Professional Practice. We look at the legal obligations of the OHS professional, how they may act as a moral agent and the obstacles to ethical-decision-making. We finish with nine areas to consider when speaking up about OHS concerns to keep the discussion constructive.

Plant and machinery are present in most workplaces and working with moving plant or parts create exposure to the risk of injuries. The hazards associated with moving parts of machinery include the risk of crushing, shearing, entangling, trapping, hitting or abrading, or the uncontrolled release of pressure (energy). To successfully identify these hazards requires knowledge of how kinetic and potential energy and the interface between people and machinery that causes a loss of control of the energy.

In this podcast, we summarise the chapter on Mechanical Plant that is in the BOK Core Body of Knowledge for the Generalist OHS Professional. The discussion draws on the safety hierarchy of controls to develop ways to protect people when working with moving plant. We conclude with some implications for health and safety practitioners.

Controlling risk to prevent work-related fatalities, injuries, diseases and ill-health is the core role of the safety professional. Legislation governs the duty to control workplace risk and looks for organisations to do more than just compliance activities.

A chapter published by the Australian Institute of Health and Safety explores the underpinning principles of controlling risk. The law does not require a risk-free work environment where accidents never happen, but instead requires employers to take such steps as are practicable to provide and maintain a safe working environment. The safety professional must consider controlling risk to decrease the probability or likelihood that hazards become uncontrolled and they need to mitigate the effects of the consequences of risks. Several principles underpin the strategies for controlling risk.

This podcast summarises requisite variety, the hierarchy of controls, time-sequence approaches, barriers and defences, the precautionary principle and the socio-technical systems approach to controlling risk. We also offer control strategies that health and safety professionals can use.

FIFO/DIDO working arrangements are regularly used by mining and construction companies. There's a link between these working arrangements and declining mental health.

For this podcast, we look at some research that was published before the pandemic that investigates the impact of psycho-social isolation which is common in remote work. This study finds that psycho-social isolation is a significant issue for FIFO/DIDO construction workers and that it affects several relationship levels.

Given this was an issue before the pandemic, we can only expect that the problem has been exacerbated in the past 12 months. This research provides recommendations to improve the health and well-being of workers employed under FIFO/DIDO arrangements that may be useful in the current environment.