Health & SAFETY
Upright Access Systems Ltd are passionate believers in providing a safe and healthy workplace for all workers, visitors and contractors in the place of work we control. Our focus is on sustainable, continuous improvement in health and safety performance through leadership and behavioural change. In order to achieve this, our mission will be to promote, engage and entrench our core values to all workers in order of priority of safety, quality and productivity throughout our team.
We have a dedicated Health and Safety team whose Number one goal is to make sure that the health & safety standards and responsibility to workers are kept at a high standard and compliant to the new health and safety at work act and follows Good Practice Guidelines for scaffolding in New Zealand. Management has the ultimate responsibility for the safety of our staff, however with the help of our employees they too have a responsibility to ensure their own safety and safety of others are not put at risk. By doing so our staff will participate in toolbox meeting with team before work starts onsite, complete risk assessment of site, read, understand and sign Job Safety Analysis (JSA), attend inductions onto new worksites and complete any necessary training needed.
We are committed to providing a safe and healthy environment for all workers, visitors, contractors and others in the places of work we control.
Our focus is on sustainable, continuous improvement in health & safety performance through leadership and behavioural change.
Management and workers will work together to establish and use health & safety procedures that will create a safe workplace protecting workers and other persons against harm to their health, safety and welfare. Upright Access and its workers will pursue reasonably practicable steps to achieve a safe workplace.
HAZARD IDENTIFICATION & RISK MANAGEMENT
We will systematically identify all hazards in our workplace and assess the risk by completing a Job Safety Analysis.
We will use worker knowledge and experience, along with industry information from SARNZ, Site Safe, ACC and other relevant sources to ensure our Job Safety Analysis has identified all critical hazards, assessed risk and implemented controls required to achieve our goal of minimising injuries, incidents and accidents.
We will maintain a list of our chemical hazards, obtain Safety Data Sheets for them, and provide a SOP and a JSA. All workers will have immediate access to SDS information when working with these chemicals.
Our completed Job Safety Analysis will be used for new worker Inductions, worker Training, Toolbox Safety Meetings and Workplace Inspections.
WORKER PARTICIPATION
We will provide reasonable opportunities for our workers to participate effectively in ongoing processes for improvement in health and safety. This includes Hazard Reporting, risk assessment and the Job Safety Analysis process, a Training Needs Assessment, Safety Meetings and Accident Investigations.
Hazards reported by workers and ways of controlling them will be entered into the Hazard Register. Job Safety Analysis will be updated regularly to reflect all newly reported hazards and work tasks.
WORKER INDUCTION AND TRAINING
We will induct all new workers to the critical hazards they are likely encounter working on our sites.
All workers will undertake Site Safe Passport training every two years so that they receive an ongoing common and basic understanding of construction safety and so that they are prepared to actively participate in our own safety activities.
All workers will be trained to safely carry out their tasks. We will identify the specific types of training each worker requires based on his or her responsibilities, we will arrange training to ensure they are able to act safely carrying out these responsibilities. We will use Job Safety Analysis to ensure we cover the relevant hazards, risks and controls for each worker. We will maintain a record of all training activities for each worker.
We will hold regular monthly Safety Meetings. These meetings will be used to discuss health and safety issues that will be encountered while working on-site. We will involve our workers in these meetings asking for their input about the hazards, risks and controls needed to do their jobs safely. We will also develop and discuss Job Safety Analysis during our Safety Meetings. We will record our Safety Meetings and display them on our Safety Notice Board.
MONITORING AND SUPERVISION
We will monitor our workplace to ensure that our planned controls are implemented and are effective in eliminating or minimising hazards. We will supervise workers to ensure they understand our required controls and the consequences of not implementing them.
We will recognise and encourage safe worker actions and we will coach and train workers who we observe acting unsafely.
When new hazards are identified or where their planned controls do not effectively eliminate or minimise hazards, they will be entered onto the Hazard Register. New and effective ways of dealing with these hazards will be developed through worker participation.
INCIDENT REPORTING AND INVESTIGATING
We will encourage our workers to report all incidents and accidents. We will not blame workers for reporting or having incidents, but will look at our Company’s own policies and procedures that may have led to them. We will investigate all reported incidents and accidents to determine the contributing and root causes and we will take immediate corrective action to eliminate those causes.
In the event of a serious harm incident we will take all necessary steps to prevent further injury and we will secure the site to ensure it is not disturbed. We will immediately notify WorkSafe NZ.
Any WorkSafe NZ Notices placed on work activities on any site under our control will be complied with.
EMERGENCY PLANNING
For each of our sites we will develop relevant emergency information in the form of a Site Specific Safety Plan.
We will train our workers working on each site in their responsibilities under the Emergency Plan.
Our workers will have access to a mobile phone, stocked first aid kit and a fire extinguisher at all times they are working on-site.
All Visitors to sites under our control will be supervised at all times. Visitors will be inducted to the site specific hazards, site rules, Emergency Plan and they will be required to wear appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE). We will maintain an Induction/Visitor Register.
PLANT AND EQUIPMENT
We will provide our workers with plant and equipment that is safe for its intended use and that is maintained in safe condition. We will provide personal protective clothing and equipment required to minimise hazards to our workers.
