Site Safe and Wellington Master Builders have partnered up for a series of proactive health and safety audits around Wellington.
The free audits were part of a joint initiative designed to highlight how independent auditing can help improve safety onsite.
With the help of Carters health and safety advisor Gareth Jeune, Site Safe advisor Ryan Groves audited a volume build, renovation, residential new build and a commercial build to assess what was working well and what could be improved.
Feedback from the audits was presented to Wellington Master Builders members at a breakfast event in September.
Mr Groves identified several positive trends across the sites, including good fencing signage, after-hours protection and good hazard control and risk identification.
A few areas that could benefit from improvement were:
• Falling risks.
• Worker engagement.
• Setting standards and expectations.
Those at the breakfast got a few tips from Mr Groves on how to improve in these areas, including:
• Planning ahead when working at height, and running regular site inspections to check if risks had changed.
• Improving engagement by involving subbies at pre-start meetings.
• Establishing clear standards and expectations should be done before work kicks off, and can be done as part of the induction process.
Mr Groves returned to the sites a month later to check on progress, and noted a particular improvement around working at height on the renovation site.
Some comments about health and safety from workers on the sites were:
• Smooth progress on site only happens when subbies are on the same page as us.
• It makes sense to include health and safety in the conversation.
• They know a lot about the tasks they are working on, which can help us too.
• It would be nice to see that everyone had the same procedures in place, just to know we are working on the same level.
For more information on how to get an independent audit, email [email protected] or call 0800 SITE SAFE.
