Workplace health & safety legislation

People who conduct a business or undertaking obligations

Providing and maintaining a safe & healthy work environment

Providing and maintaining safe plant

Ensuring the safe use, handling, storage and transport of substances

Ensuring safe systems of work

Providing information, instruction, training and supervision to ensure health and safety

Worker obligations

Comply with instructions given for workplace health & safety

Use personal protective equipment if the employer provides it and you are properly instructed in its use

Not wilfully or recklessly interfere with or misuse anything provided for workplace health and safety at the workplace

Not wilfully place others at risk

Not wilfully injure yourself

Obligations of others

The following also have obligations-people in control of a workplace, principal contractors, people in control of a relevant workplace, people in control of fixtures, fittings, or plant in relevant workplaces, designers of plant, manufacturers of plant, hirers, importers and suppliers of plant, owners of plant, erectors and installers of plant, manufacturers of substances, workplace visitors and volunteers

Critical aspects

Licences & certificates

Plant & registration

Reporting incidents

Plant & machinery

Prosecutions

Penalties

Consultation

Auditing

Powers of inspectors

Codes of practice generally

Plant

Mobile cranes

First-aid

Risk management

Harassment

Hazardous substances

Asbestos

Lead

Manual tasks

Traffic management

Confined space

Working at heights

Working at depths

Scaffolding

Noise

General

Workers compensation and rehabilitation

Building fire safety regulation

Dangerous goods legislation

Emergency services

In my current role as an OHS Consultant with OHS Change in Brisbane I provide OHS expertise to organisations requiring assistance in this area. This requires interpreting and applying OHS standards and guidelines to each company’s particular circumstances. A recent example includes assisting an organisation upon them receiving an Improvement Notice from WPH&S with regard to confined space practices and:

• Conducting an audit of existing practices and identifying issues such as a lack of use of gas monitoring apparatus, no confined space working permit or confined space risk assessment;

• Liaising with the Production Manager, Workshop Supervisor and relevant H&S Representative and devising an action plan to remedy the situation;

• In conjunction with the H&S Representative reviewing the Australian Standard for confined space procedure under the WPH&S Act;

• Conducting research through the internet and discussing these issues with management from mining companies frequently involved in confined space management (and obtaining their procedures);

• Redrafting the existing procedures to incorporate necessary changes and receiving approval from the companies General Manager to adopt these changes;

• Training the organisations employees in new procedures and guidelines.

The Improvement Notice was subsequently closed off.

Further to the above, in my current role I assisted an organisation in responding to an improvement notice with regard to hazardous substances management. This included:

• Reviewing the advisory standard for hazardous substances under the WPH&S Act and writing a summary for presentation to management;

• Conducting an audit of the organisations current practices;

• Developing recommendations for improvement in areas such as updating material safety data sheets (were out of date), obtaining a complete inventory of products used (was then incomplete), undertaking product risk assessments, developing staff training for hazardous substances use;

• Attaining a complete inventory which revealed excessive duplication of products (which subsequently led to less product use and considerable savings);

• Attaining up to date material safety data sheets and conducting risk assessments for all products;

• Developing internal training in hazardous substance usage;

• Receiving approval from the organisations management to adopt these changes.