Central Safety Group Melbourne

Date & Time: Tuesday 13 November 2018 at 12:00pm

PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE:
Venue: Masters Builders Association, Training Room 1, 332 Albert Street, East Melbourne

Parking can be a problem in that area, but it’s easily accessible by public transport. Trams 11, 12 or 109 in Collins Street will take you to the Albert Street stop (Stop 11) which is a couple of minutes’ walk away. And it’s about 10 minutes’ walk from Parliament Station.

Construction Safety During the Boom

Greg Splatt.

Throughout Australia there is unprecedented growth in all areas of construction – commercial, civil and residential. This boom has created issues relating to knowledge, skills and competencies needed at all levels of the construction workforce.
The issue of safety in this climate will be discussed by Greg Splatt, a construction safety manager and trainer, in a lunchtime presentation for Central safety Group on 13 November.

Greg says many people are coming into the industry with the promise of long-term work, long hours and good pay packets. But without the necessary industry experiences and know-how, what risk do they present on job sites? Challenges with safety understanding and experience can also exist at supervisor and manager level.

Greg will also speak about his experiences with the unique OHS challenges during extensive construction rebuilds after major events such as cyclones and bushfires.

Note: When booking for the Event, please ensure you select the November Meeting from the dropdown list (shaded orange), to RSVP to this meeting.

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Date & Time: Tuesday 13 November 2018 at 12:00pm

PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE:
Venue: Masters Builders Association, Training Room 1, 332 Albert Street, East Melbourne.

Parking can be a problem in that area, but it’s easily accessible by public transport. Trams 11, 12 or 109 in Collins Street will take you to the Albert Street stop (Stop 11) which is a couple of minutes’ walk away. And it’s about 10 minutes’ walk from Parliament Station.

Construction Safety During the Boom

Greg Splatt.

Throughout Australia there is unprecedented growth in all areas of construction – commercial, civil and residential. This boom has created issues relating to knowledge, skills and competencies needed at all levels of the construction workforce.
The issue of safety in this climate will be discussed by Greg Splatt, a construction safety manager and trainer, in a lunchtime presentation for Central safety Group on 13 November.

Greg says many people are coming into the industry with the promise of long-term work, long hours and good pay packets. But without the necessary industry experiences and know-how, what risk do they present on job sites? Challenges with safety understanding and experience can also exist at supervisor and manager level.

Greg will also speak about his experiences with the unique OHS challenges during extensive construction rebuilds after major events such as cyclones and bushfires.

Note: When booking for the Event, please ensure you select the November Meeting from the dropdown list (shaded orange), to RSVP to this meeting.

RSVP Here

Date & Time: Tuesday 9 October 2018 at 12:00pm Venue: Level 1, 333 Queen Street Melbourne (AMS Consulting Group)

A fresh look at safety inspections

Dr Ross Donohue, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University.

There has been surprisingly little research done on how inspectors assess health and safety in workplaces. Although the inspectors’ task is grounded in rules and regulations, there are few standardised measures to assist them.

Dr Ross Donohue, our speaker on 9 October, has been doing ground breaking work on this.

As a result Ross has developed a 7-item generic OHS metric checklist as a standardised tool to assist inspectors and has conducted research to validate this measure in a study undertaken with WorkSafe Victoria.
Ross also sees the need for developing measures and training to assist OHS inspectors to assess psychosocial risk.

Note: When booking for the Event, please ensure you select the October Meeting from the dropdown list (shaded orange), to RSVP to this meeting.

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Date & Time: Tuesday 11 September 2018 at 12:00pm Venue: Level 1, 333 Queen Street Melbourne (AMS Consulting Group)

Sit to stand desks – what’s the verdict?

Professor David Caple - OHS consultant and Adjunct Professor, Centre for Ergonomics & Human Factors, La Trobe University.

Many organisations have invested in sit-stand desks in response to experts’ claims about the benefits, ranging from reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes to solving back pain.

Professor David Caple will discuss the latest knowledge on the effectiveness of sit-stand desks and issues surrounding their use on 11 September in a lunchtime talk to the Central Safety Group.

David is presenting two papers on this topic at the International Ergonomics Association Congress in Florence, Italy in August. He will be part of a group of 16 presenters from around the world sharing the latest research relating to sit to stand desks.

There can be confusion about how much to use these desks while working, and whether a certain duration or pattern of standing should be prescribed. “In some places they are using them very well, but in other places employees and their managers are unclear about how to benefit from them. As a result, you’ll sometimes find people feeling guilty for not using them,” says David. “A lot of factors can affect how successful these desks are in the workplace. This includes things like the change management process, job design, employee education and work culture.”

Note: When booking for the Event, please ensure you select the September Meeting from the dropdown list (shaded orange), to RSVP to this meeting.

RSVP Here

Sit to stand desks: what's the verdict?

Professor David Caple is a popular annual speaker at Central Safety Group and has spoken on a range of topics. On 11 September a keen crowd attended his talk about the latest findings on the benefits of sit-stand desks. 

He talked about changes in workplace design that have brought more variety into the use of sit-stand desks. However, there is also the need for people to have a better understanding of desk height and positioning, patterns of use and the appropriate posture, at which point the presentation became interactive when he had us all up trying it out.

David also outlined current research findings that disputed some of the earlier assumptions about the benefits of using these desks – including cardiovascular benefits and alleviating shoulder and lower back fatigue.

Once again David Caple's presentation proved why his appearance at Central Safety Group is always one of the highlights of the year.

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A WorkSafe Inspector’s-eye view

We had something special in July. The group enjoyed hearing a WorkSafe Inspector’s-eye view from speaker Les Cameron, who has worked in that role for over 20 years.

Les also gave a run-down on some current priorities and events happening at WorkSafe Victoria, including this year’s relocation of its Melbourne CBD head office with several hundred roles to Geelong.

Of particular interest to the audience was Les’s account of some of the problems he’d inspected, where lack of attention to small details had led to major incidents. In other examples, he showed how careless practices or ignoring the rules had put sites in serious danger. He also talked about some WorkSafe intervention programs currently being tested.

Unfortunately we are unable to provide the presentation from this meeting. If you want to make sure you don't miss out on any of our great speakers, put the second Tuesday of the month in your calendar and come along to our meetings.

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Taming Contractor Management

John Naughton shared his experiences of working with George Weston Foods to overhaul their contractor management system and bring it into the 21st century.

Being a large organisation with multiple sites across Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific engaging more than 4,000 external contractors, there were particular challenges in streamlining the multiple systems that existed. However, any sized organisation could relate to his descriptions of ad hoc manual systems with the potential for frequent safety breaches.

The centralised electronic system he developed was tailored to the users and is so much more than a database. It was built as a management and compliance tool that allows everyone in the organisation to become a contractor manager. An example is the Permit To Work system that was built from the existing procedure then improved and can now be tracked easily. As John explained, centralisation = control.

The system has resulted in many safety improvements and the business gained a 600% return on investment in just 12 months.

The meeting provoked quite a bit of discussion as attendees were keen to dig down into the details of John's successful project.

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Date & Time: WEDNESDAY 15 August 2018 at 12:00pm Venue: Level 1, 333 Queen Street Melbourne (AMS Consulting Group)

Taming Contractor Management

John Naughton.

Contractor management is one of the most challenging areas of safety risk management. Contractor management systems can be onerous and complicated, leaving gaps when it comes to covering business and compliance requirements.

John Naughton and his team tackled this problem and transformed contractor management while he was Director of HSE at a major food company, and he will share his experiences at a lunchtime talk to Central Safety Group on Wednesday 15 August.

He will describe the journey from a manual spreadsheet-based contractor management system to an easy to manage, efficient and flexible system embracing modern technology. This change also brought crucial new dimensions and features to the company’s system for managing contractors, and significantly, reduced administrative time and costs.

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Note: When booking for the Event, please ensure you select the August Meeting from the dropdown list (shaded orange), to RSVP to this meeting.

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Paper mentioned by Kevin Jones at the June 2018 meeting

This paper about the role of safety professionals was hot-off-the-internet when it was mentioned at the CSG Meeting. It was written by Dave Provan, Sidney Dekker and Drew Rae and called “Benefactor or burden: Exploring the professional identity of safety professionals”. The abstract says: “Understanding the professional identity of safety professionals provides an important foundation for exploring their professional practice, and by extension, understanding organizational safety more broadly.”

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