06.05.2011

WorkSafe targets cranes, access and telehandlers

WorkSafe has launched an inspection blitz across regional Western Australia in order to ensure mobile equipment is being used safely on construction sites.

Inspectors will be focusing on a range of lifting equipment including telescopic handlers, elevating work platforms and mobile cranes.

The inspections have been spurred on by the fatal accident at the Holcim cement plant in Boulder, Western Australia last December. A man was catapulted to his death due to not using a harness and lanyard.

Acting WorkSafe WA commissioner Lex McCulloch said: “The inherent dangers involved with such equipment means safety standards need to be strictly enforced. They not only require particular classes of licenses to be able to operate them, but under our regulations, a number of things need to be in place, when operating such equipment and it will be those things that we will be checking off as we inspect the plan."

Vertikal Comment

This ‘purge’ is one of a series of highly targeted inspection pushes by Worksafe WA this year. The concept of focusing a good deal of the organisations efforts onto one or a few areas at a time has some merit.

1.It allows the organisation to make enough of an impact within a specific industry or area to send a strong message that has employers looking to the rules and what they are doing on site

2.A focus allows the inspectors to become proficient in a specialist area such as working at height or lifting duties through a short but intense regime of inspections.

The downside is that, having conducted an intense focus on one area the organisation doesn’t come back to it for some time. Although one assumes that if the intense inspection regime yields a large number of issues it will be repeated sooner rather than later.