One of the legal requirements of any construction site in Australia is a Construction Safety Policy. This refers to the measures to be undertaken in order to ensure a healthy and safe environment for all those involved on a project. In Australia, this involves complying with Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) legislation at both the Commonwealth and state level.
The importance of construction safety should not be underestimated because there are few other industries that involve placing workers and people in general under high risk on a daily basis. Furthermore, the consequences of incompliance can prove to be disastrous for a small contractor or company in terms of hefty fines or prosecution. Having a Construction Safety Policy allows you to avoid such an issue.
The NSW Department for Education and Training website is a very good example of a safety policy for all their employees. If you are still in the process of coming up with your own policy, you may want to use the structure of this policy to assist you. Here’s a quick rundown of the structure:
- Policy objectives
- Audience and applicability
- The context of the policy
- Responsibilities and delegations
- The monitoring, evaluation and reporting requirements
- Contact details
Such a policy may also come in the form of a Construction Safety Manual, the benefits of which are properly informing the workers about potential hazards on a worksite and the steps they can undertake to reduce the risk of these hazards or respond to them.
This is a more practical and probably easier way to communicate a Construction Safety Policy to all those involved in the project.
