Health and Safety
The Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) systems in use by Investa have been developed over a period of 5 years. These systems have been reviewed annually by the National Safety Council of Australia. With our systems being developed primarily for risk coverage, the past 12 months has provided us the opportunity to further develop our management platform to make it more effective, less time consuming, and more robust.
Auditing to AS4801
Alongside the extensive auditing process undertaken by the National Safety Council of Australia, this year a further external audit was added to test our systems. This audit was conducted to specifically test whether our business units' management plans are in accordance with AS/NZS4801:2001 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, a component of our group Safety, Health and Environmental Management System. The result of the audits showed that the management plans are consistent with the requirements of the group management system.
Refinement of Existing Processes and Procedures
In order to provide the greatest level of coverage, risk management systems often employ several layers of checks and balances to ensure visibility by all levels of management. The reporting systems that make up these checks and balances are often time consuming leading to a draw on resources. Over the past 12 months we've focussed on developing our systems to make them more effective by:
- Increasing reporting against positive performance indicators such as Contractor Compliance Checks (ensuring that our contractors work in accordance with their safe work method statements);
- Streamlining our reporting systems to remove double ups, but provide greater insight for management on reports being produced;
- Refining our reporting systems so that they provide more valuable detailed information while removing portions that over time have proven to be unnecessary or redundant.
- Strengthening policies and procedures to reflect all changes implemented, and provide greater clarity given learning experiences of the past 5 years.
Positive Performance Indicators
Though we are committed to detail and accuracy in the reporting of incidents and near hits, we are also continually working on ways to identify good safety practices recognising that positive reinforcement is often a more effective way to drive cultural change than a focus on failures. Positive Performance Indicators identify actions and activities that contribute to continuous improvement.
The principle behind positive performance indicators was developed following a review of the 'Bird Triangle'. Bird reviewed statistical data from over 1 million incidents and showed that, on average, for every 600 Near Hits (where an incident occurs but no-one is injured) there were approximately 30 minor incidents, 10 incidents requiring medical treatment, and 1 fatality. While the nature of our commercial business is unlikely to lead precisely to these same ratios, the link between near hit occurrences and serious incidents is clear.
As unsafe work practices lead to near hit occurrences, it stands to reason that by increasing visibility of work practices and improving the quality of these over time, near hit and serious incidents should be reduced.
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