Yep Pete I remember being told the same thing when I was up there years ago and asked the same question usually its some peanut training officer that write that safety shit up and has never been in a machine let alone a pit or decline

Yeh its getting stupid. Hardhat glasses gloves long and longs on a platform ladder under a closed ceiling to change lights... Going to have to wear a harness on a 2 ft steps soon!

 How did Malcolm Douglas die?

 and they wonder why costs keep on going up from contractors...

 Haha... I work for an air con company who services alot of buildings in the city. There's a particular large mining tenant of many of those buildings and I've seen some absolute crackers!!!... The best I can think of atm is on a coffee cup dispenser, a big ass sign 'warning, dispenser may have sharp edges'

If you ask me the whole safety/ohs crap has gone wayyyyy over the top mainly due to ohs staff having to come up with more ways to justify their bullshit over payed position!!

 If you ever get the chance to get an office jock job where everything is going well, then you have a problem! What will you wright on your next job application? Everything going well, keep it all as I found it etc. Shit no! You will make up any old shit for everyone else to run around doing so now you can wright on the next application about how you changed the world.....without adding that it did need changing in the first place.

I have seen it happen a few times, and the better the place had been running the sillier the change ideas were.

I didn't need to get a little older to notice this situation either. Just now days so many work places have had well set up polices and clever workers,  that mostly all new office jockeys can only come up with shit changes that make a place run less better.

Been about 12 years since I worked in the mineral sands industry as a supervisor and with being one of the first on board with Tiwest when they started and slowly it changed me from being hands on old school, to write on sheets of paper setting out 1000 ways to do something that we did before without blinking an eyelid.
Now its got to the stage where you turn your brain off at the front gate and walk around like zombies.
Who ever thought up half the JSAs needs them shoved up where the insurance companies tongue won't reach.

.

 Sometimes safety does seem to go too far but as a liability issue its cheaper for the big mining companies to cover their ass in every possible way rather than have a death or injury. I see it every day as Im part of the engineering side for many mining jobs.

As most mining company's try to say safety over production what a joke the unwritten rule to them is production production production

 A few years ago one major miner had more deaths in a year in the Pilbara than the Aus army in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

After that is when things went way over the top with safety(with that company at least)but you can see why.

Been a bit in the news lately about how low productivity is now for the amount of personnel and resources allocated to projects,with money tighter some company's may need to pull back on safety and find some middle ground.

Frustrating that common sense has disappeared.

 Blame game - the entire saftey culture is built on blaming someone else.

Boomer

 One mine site allows vehicle to be left running if wheel chocked...this is for breakdown fitters to have the opportunity to have a break in a cooler cab...makes sense to me. Are not JHAs SWPs and other risk assessment tools avenues to assist the individuals using them to reduce the risk of harm to ones self or work group. I mean reduce is the key word here...there is still room for the experienced operators to pass on their knowledge in the industry but unfortunately a lot of them are frustrated and choose not to...whether its due to a upstart super, upstart worker, or themselves not accepting the paper heavy processes in place these days.

Unfortunately it is not going away...As far as companies reducing costs...controlling expenses and asking individuals to be more accountable...about time...there are that many dags in the industry (people that turn up, hang around and do fk all) some would say protected species...these people need to work in the real world for awhile...get half the wage, pay more living expenses and try to live the good life then...maybe this will give them the adjustments needed to make them realise this wicket they are on is pretty good maybe I should do a real days work...my bitch....anyway another thought....who would live what some would say a safer life...an adrenaline junky or a nun...who would have a better perception of risk....the answer to that may go someway towards answering why companies are forced to have documents to prove that the company is doing all it can to keep its workforce safe...anyway gotta go put my ppe on and go to bed...

 Hey seakem I have been out on barrow island for well over a year now and I have never heard of any one fucking around with the wildlife there is too many eyes on you even if you wanted to pick one up.  And to get alcohol to site isn't as easy as it sounds it would be easy to get meth into Australia we go thru that much quarantine.i have been doing construction/mining scaffolds for 10+ years and I hate it now you can't do anything they have basically stopped us from working now.

here are some of our so called recorded INCIDENTS

fire started in crib hut : guy left his chicken burger in the microwave to long bit of smoke that was it

man got cramp whilst sleeping at nite : control measures don't work so hard (he doesn't do anything)

man bites tongue whilst eating smoko : this one has stumped em how the can put procedures in place to solve this scenario. 

Scaffold gets splinter in his finger from boards. Stop scaffolding for 2 days and come up with a solution all scaffolders to wear iron clad ranch worx gloves which are $56 a pair then a month later FUCK don't use to many gloves are budget is blowing out now for gloves.

The industry is well beyond fucked now and it's not the workers fault or unions but they will get blamed for it

All i can say is if you don't think a car can put itself in gear and chase someone just watch any of the Herbie movies. Scarey stuff! 

isn't your hand or arm all busted from a workplace accident, giving you an early retirement?

 The reason behind this rule on mine sites is someone could find the car running and then potentially hop in the car and take off while someone is working on it. It's all about putting yourself in the line of fire. The holes in the cheeses lining up if you like. I pick up 3 or 4 people a week doing this and give them a friendly reminder. The only people who are exempt are bus drivers with their buses.

cheers

Dale

and I can assure you some workers are so thick you can't protect them, going into machines etc,without isolating etc taking short cuts, we used to have a safety audit that they would sit down and do and answer all the questions tick all the boxes etc, saved our arse many times, worksafe would attend,show them the audit and they would see the employee had signed it and say, you couldn't have done anymore, probably wouldn't have helped you Petermac

Here's a point of view not explored yet on this post. Big business, read mining companies and the like, make doing the simplest task so onerous with procedures etc.. and time consuming i.e. getting the permits in place etc... that it makes it a pretty easy argument to blame "unproductive Australian workers, unions" etc...

dont even get me started on safety....what a joke....

gone way over the top and its costing jobs now becuase production is down due to all the wasted on site time.

they will turn a blind eye when it suits them, but if you f#*k it up your gone!!!

 we had a 7 page jha for cooking a bbq....wtf??

caught em out one day for cooking on the bbq without being signed onto the jha...off course it was laughed off.

i agree we need something, but it just needs to be simplyfied, rewriting 10 page jha's every monday morn dose not solve anything!!

you would be better off spending the time in the field with hands on training, going through the points on the jha in the flesh, not sitting in a room copying word for word.

they have dug a hole for themselves and its just getting deeper.

A few have mentioned the problem. LIABILITY, LIABILITY, LIABILITY. How many times has some tool injured himself whilst doing something stupid. He then screams blue murder and blames everybody but himself so he can get some form of payout or a paid holiday. These claims cost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.

The litigators have a field day, the judge says the Company didnt take adequate care or supervise the twit who managed to injure himself when he jumped 3.0m to the ground. FFS says the judge, why didnt you say this in the induction, why didnt you have a sign up, why didnt you have someone watching him, it goes on and on. It's therefore your fault  Mr Company so you pay, and you pay big and when you pay there are fines and the fines go right up the tree at every level. Again they also can be hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on seniority levels.

The only prevention that you ultimately have is to have safety people, safety signs and and safety processes, just to prevent some twit from doing something bloody stupid in the first place. Unfortunately, then we see all of the sensible people saying what do I need to do this shit for ie helmet, glasses, gloves, longs, boots to change a light globe. Its because Johnny stupid balances on a wobbly box and stretches to reach over the running machine to change the globe, falls in and gets chopped. Is he responsible . . . . no, its the same old story, why didnt you say, dont do this in the induction, why didnt you have a sign up saying dont do this, why didnt you have someone watching him to make sure that he didnt do this stupid thing.

Dont get me wrong, I'm all for a safe workplace, we need it because unfortunately, accidents do happen. I have seen safety in my workplace come ahead in leaps and bounds but its gone this way ie to the point of being ridiculous because the courts have allowed it to happen. Most of the National type businesses take safety very seriously but some of the smaller ones are perhaps a little more casual but laws are not based on the size of the company. I guess its a case of one law fits all.

I feel better now . . . . .

 couple of signs around the ships i have worked on include "DO NOT CLEAN OVEN WITH HOSE" and  "CHECK WATER TEMPERATURE BEFORE ENTERING SHOWER AS SCOLDING COULD OCCUR"

They can put all the signs up and do all the jsa ,jha and lock out checks but the moment your injured they promise to look after you,then they try to point the finger at you and see what you may have done to cause the injury or damage and then finally the bastards turn their back on you have seen it happen to plenty of people before and it has happened to me as well mining companys are there to make money and people are dispensable no matter who you are or what position you hold,there is always someone else to take your place and they wont take a second glance at you as your damaged goods

Sign in truck bay of old employer CHU#@ " DON'T BE A DUMMY AND PLAY WITH YOUR GUN "Hah fu%$& DUR ! But they still did ,one guy played with his gun at Boddington Gold Mine,blew a big hole in the roof of the truck.Mine manager wanted blood,got it but not before this guy got 2 weeks payed leave while they investigated it,Hey ! what's there to investigate ! Fuc&^% Morons .

There are a lot of stupid safety rules out there (we had a JHS for walking the 100m to a bus FFS), but its always good to consider two things
1. Are you the dumbest person on your jobsite
2. Do you know every step of the decision making process on any given rule.

Chances are 1 doesn't apply (I hope), but that does mean there is some brain dead fuckwit walking around who is gonna stuff things up and needs things spelt out to them (like don't put your hand in moving machinery, cause yes idiots do it). So don't think of the rules as they apply to you, think of it for all the numptys dumber than you.

As for two, its always easy to think you know everything when you're missing the picture. You get it both ways though. Safety guys that wouldn't have a freaking clue how stuff operates on the job and are living in a plastic fantasy land, but then you also have the operators who base everything on their own experience and think that's all there is to it. You might think a certain rule is dumb, but there might be various incidents you've never heard of or very specific reasons for rules that you just aren't aware of. At the end of the day as an operator, you get the rules, not the reasons, and although a lot of the rules may seem rather stupid, some seemingly stupid rules may be for good reasons. Of course, a lot are stupid by desk based pencil pushers coming with with rules about things they don't know.

Don't forget what cruise control said. Liability, liability, liability. Often that's what defines pay packets two (well, until you get to untouchable CEO with a golden parachute). I once had someone go "nah, just do it like this" and I said "well, if you wanna sign off on it and accept liability if it fucks up, go ahead". We did it the original specified way ;)
Liability is a lot easier to understand when its your head on the line. Then you understand why in some cases things seem overly safe.

who are our nations latest 3 national hero's in my opinion its our last 3 VC recipients I don't think they would be siting down doing a jsa, cbp, checking the hazchem chart getting a ptw and doing a take 5 before they took the action they needed to at the time.
Sooner or later a director of one our big multi nationals will say at a board meeting shit look at the money we are spending on safety lets get back to some reality , he will be immediately removed from the board and a couple of years later some one else will bring it up at a board meeting and the other board members will say he's right lets do something and that bloke will get a big fat bonus for having such a brilliant idea

 Everything in this world is about risk. Business, life,war etc. What's the SAS motto....who dares wins.

i have heard that you shouldnt leave the car idling around gas plants and the like. i think theres a vid of a yank bloke that blew some place up like that.

For those that are responsible leaders within the industry safety is a value that they try to imbed into their teams, yes we have some crazy things sometimes but it is always about getting people home at the end of the day. There will be times that it is over the top but in 95% of cases it is there for the right reasons to protect people and not repeat past mistakes. If you believe it needs to be better managed than step up and be a leader.

try knocking on one of your employees doors in the middle of the night and tell his wife that her husband is dead from a workplace accident knowing it could have been prevented then tell me JHA's, SWP's and process doesn't matter...

Doesn't come in a bottle from the super market. Time on the job with the right training and working alongside a experienced operator/worker is a must for all new starters. We are all bred and work differently, some workers do have a natural ability to grasp working safely and think before doing where others don't. Than there are some which should never got onsite in the first place, (Got the job because they know someone).Even if you have X amount of years on other sites each worker must be come site aware. JHA's/JSA's are a legal binding document and will be the first bit of paperwork asked for after a accident/injury. They are a very good tool for checking to make sure everything is in order and safe to operate. Nothing can replace awareness and attention whilst on the job.

As for rewritting JHA's/JSA's it's better in my view to discuss and review each day/week on the job with the safety officer there rather than a copy and paste exercise. The whole team is to be involved, I seen it many times where only a few workers actually get involved, one person writes out the new JHA/JSA while the other kick back and do F;=#@ All.

It's very different working with safety officers which have been on the tools to the ones who have little to no practical knowledge. Especially when you have to explain in detail how to do a job and the safety controls which are being used before they will sign off on a JHA/JSA. They are than relying solely on the workers to make the right choices in regards to safety.

Has safety gone mad? Maybe to some extent it has, some of the small bits and pieces do make the job a lot more time consuming and fustrating to do. But every incident, injury avoided reduced is for the benefit of all involved especially the individual.

Remember you can't write a JHA/JSA for stupidity and idiots. These individuals can go back to pushing trolleys and flipping burgers.

There's a few members who have their cert 4 wonder what their thoughts are.

try this one I was on a course with a couple of blokes from Hamersley at Karratha college at smoko time we went to the canteen a certain bloke ordered a dounut he asked for it to be warmed up in the micro wave that done he sits down with us and bites into it the jam squirts out and burns his lip he put an incident report in and bollocked the girl in the canteen (the dick head) ( I returned fire at him on her behalf) oh yeah he is a superintendent now

I'll add a little bit.  Another fatality on a WA mine site this week..

My investigation in the week just past involves a truck which decided to roll away after 45 minutes of being stationary on a small decline, why it rolled away, well anyone's 'guess' but the mechanical reports were the brakes were all good.  His JHA stated that he would use wheel chocks and he didn't, luckily no one seriously injured.

Has safety gone too far, in many cases I reckon yes.  In many cases though, it's people thinking they're invincible, not thinking at all or just poor communication which results in someone else getting injured.

 Coming from the office side of things, I get why rules get put in place. If you have 10 people all doing the same job and one person drops a spanner on his thong wearing foot and hurts it, then you put a rule in place that everyone needs to wear steel caps. Next bloke hits his finger with a hammer so you enforce a rule where impact resistant gloves need to be worn. Next bloke hits his head on the roof of the car when he goes over a bump too fast, now everyone has to wear helmets. Next bloke is grinding without safety glasses whilst on an elevated platform. He gets a spark in his eye, steps back and falls off. now everyone needs to wear Boots, impact resistant gloves, helmets, safety glasses, and if on an elevated platform, a harness with an inertia reel.

Companies are just putting rules in place to protect themselves from the village idiot, or the true accident. In protecting themselves form bad safety KPI's (which could intern void contracts (I have a contract in place which has the first KPI being safety) or have them loose work), have to wrap everyone in cotton wool just in case someone thinks its funny to see how many nails they can hit into timber with their eyes shut.

yeah it shits me too, but I get it.

hahahaaa common sense -the worst saying in the world

 i love jsa s etc.

i get paid to sit in the aircon while i do the JSA, its like an extra smoko -which is the same as yesterday, which beats the crap out of putting bang in holes in 40 deg plus

and who is the only dumb fk to smoke within 10 m of dets lying open ready to be connected -yes the OHS BLOKE! go figure