Analyzing Safety Breach In The Workplace: Workplace Safety And Risk Management Discussion

The Work Place, the Hazards and the Preventive Measures

Discussion

The Work Place, the Hazards and the Preventive Measures

The general manager breached the principle of due diligence when he appointed his unqualified son as the company’s safety officer. The incompetent son was complacent to the roles and duties of a safety officer leading to failure to instigate the necessary steps as stipulated in section 27(5) of the Work Health and Safety laws (O’Neill & Wolfe, 2014). The safety officer ought to have ensured that; the company is in compliance with the WHS laws, is up to date with the operation activities taking place at the company’s fenced off compound adjacent to the road resurfacing project and the hazards and risks associated with those operations (Ellen, Kosny,  Ståhl, OHagan, Redgrift, Sanford & Mahood, 2016). The officer should have then mobilized the necessary resources to ensure minimization or elimination of these risks and hazards.

The compound gates had no locks and piles of materials and piping were stored there. At a closer look, the compound appeared more of a dumping site than a storage facility. And although the company employees had been warned of the underlying risks and safety threats posed by the state of the compound, visitors such as Booth who had visited the compound thirteen times on behalf of his trucking company had not been notified of these risks and dangers (ABC News, 2015).

The industrial court through the court magistrate Lorraine Walker pronounced Kenoss contractors guilty of breaching the workplace safety guidelines as outlined in the work health safety laws. There were no safety signs around the compound or flags to warn truck drivers like Booth of the low-slung live power lines. Booth was electrocuted by an electric arc after his truck either touched or came close to the loosely hanging power lines (Enhance Solutions, 2015).

The possibility of an occurrence of injuries or death to users of the site was not only foreseeable due to the lack of signs and spotters but also due to the poor access to the work site. The power lines were still turned on as the work went on in the compound.  The management of the contract site was also found to be wanting with serious questions being raised on the competency and integrity of the safety officer of the company (ABC News, 2015). Empowerment of the company’s senior executives was cast into aspersions when the former project manager of Kenoss Contractors Company was found not to be qualified to be termed as an officer due to lack of influence and control in the company’s activities and decision making process.  

How Safe Work Resolved the Issue

Lorraine Walker found Kenoss contractors guilty of ignorance as the workplace safety risks at the compound were well known by the company and it only required simple and easily affordable solutions to eliminate them. However, the management failure to rectify the situation led to the death of Michael Booth. The corporate culture of the company was also found to be poor and morally unacceptable as the safety officer was found to be closely related to the general manager and highly incompetent in his role. The organizations’ approach to safety was not systematic and lacked documentation (Enhance Solutions, 2015).

How Safe Work Resolved the Issue 

Safe Work Australia is a statutory body that oversees the development of a national policy geared towards the improvement of the workplace safety and health and offers guidance on employees or workers compensation in case of an injury or occurrence of death at the workplace due to negligence and failure of an organization to implement fully the work safety and health laws in Australia (Abubakar, 2015). The body leads in the drafting of workplace health and safety requirements for businesses in Australia and delivers these requirements inform of acts and regulations. The Acts stipulates the legal mandate of the business owners as the employers while the regulations outline the standards to be met on specific risks and dangers. In the policy also, the regulating agencies responsible for administering the workplace health and safety laws are defined.

Through the hefty financial penalty prescribed by Safe Work Australia, a strong message was conveyed to employers and companies violating the workplace safety and health laws in the country. Specifically, a strong warning was sent to the industry players on the dangers of taking lightly the workplace safety requirements such as a workplace environment with loose overhead live power lines and poor safety systems. The ruling made by the industrial court magistrate based on the laws outlined in the workplace health and safety laws provided precedence for future cases similar to that of Kenoss contactors and Michael Booth incident (The Canberra Times, 2015).

Safety and Risk Management Measures that Should Have Been Undertaken

A safe and healthy work environment is not only important for the purposes of keeping employees safe but also in meeting the set laws and regulations (Bailey, Dollard & Richards, 2015). A set of precautionary measures ought to have been undertaken to prevent this incident from happening. First, the power supply at the compound should have been switched off at the entire working hours of the day. This would prevent cases of electrocution due to electromagnetic effect or direct contact with live cables. Alternatively, proper and visible signage or flags should have been erected at strategically designated points around the compound signaling to workers and visitors the presence of live hanging power lines (Glendon & Clarke, 2015).

Safety and Risk Management Measures that Should Have Been Undertaken

Secondly, the access to the worksite compound ought to have been modified with proper planning of the compound space and the items and materials in there being done in a systematically structured approach. Regulatory, hazard and emergency information signs should have been erected close at the entry points. A workplace risk assessment procedure should have been carried at the compound to assess the level of disaster management and preparedness in case of an occurrence of a risk (Bahn, 2013).  

Employees should be trained on how to offer first aid services and provided with stations to do that when an emergency comes up. First aid kits should be provided around the workplace environments where injuries and emergencies are most likely to happen. If Booth had been offered first aid services, maybe he would have been saved and taken to the nearby hospital. Vehicles being ushered in at entry points of the compounds should have been inspected to make sure that they have the requisite first aid toolkits.

 The company should have dismissed the safety officer of the company and hired a qualified officer in that capacity. With signs of impending risks and hazards glaring at the company workers and visitors, the safety officer should have taken the necessary steps to mitigate and prevent the risks from happening. It is the role of the safety officer of any company to ensure that the organization complies with the requirements of the work health and safety laws (Biggs & Biggs, 2013). The failure of the company’s safety officer to ensure that Kenoss Contractors Company complies with these laws should have signaled incompetence to the company senior management and the officer dismissed and replaced with a qualified competent person.

When the incident occurred, Kenoss Contractors should have notified the territory regulator instead of tampering with the attendance record of Michael Booth. This was found to be criminally culpable on the part of the company as it was interfering with the investigations being carried out by the authorities.

Steps I Would Take to Address the Issue as the Safety Officer

There are two levels of safety management in an organization or business according to work health and safety laws. Safety at the workplace may be supervised by the “Person in Control of a Business Undertaking” (PCBU) or the directors of a company (Hale & Borys, 2013). If I was in charge of the safety systems at Kenoss Contractors Company, I would institute the following measures to address the problem:

• First I would see to it that a provisionary budget is set aside to ensure that the cost of maintaining a safe working environment and structures is met.
• The officers at the company are empowered and given full mandate when handling workplace health and safety issues. The project manager will be given more power and privileges to ensure he carries out his mandate effectively and efficiently.
• A risk assessment exercise is undertaken and the risks associated with the activities at the workplace compound minimized or completely eliminated (Bahn, 2013).
• I would see to it that all resident workers and visitors are provided with the requisite instructions and information on how to keep off from danger zones and how to offer first aid services to the injured.
• I would also establish a committee to handle investigations on any workplace safety and health incident and the findings of the investigation results documented for future reference in the process of continuous safety management practice (Friend & Kohn, 2018).

I would also institute measures to minimize risks in cases where the entire risk cannot be eliminated. I would oversee the implementation of the work health and safety policy in the company while as well documenting all the processes and procedures undertaken in the implementation process.

Conclusion:

Work Health and Safety management in any business undertaking or organization is not a question of compromise. The industrial court in Australia affirmed this by penalizing the Kenoss Contractors Company after it was found guilty of contravening the provisions of the Work Health and Safety laws. The death of Michael Booth would have been avoided if only the company leadership had done things according to the law. The general manager should have hired a competent and qualified person for the position of a safety officer instead of his own son. A competent officer would have made decisions and put into place measures to ensure that the company complies with the Work Health and Safety laws (Bahr, 2014).

After Booth’s incident, the company should have run a risk and safety assessment exercise to identify and minimize or completely eliminate the risks and hazards underlying at the company’s workplace (Zhang, Teizer, Eastman, & Venugopal, 2013). An overhaul of the overall top leadership was a necessary precaution and immediate replacement of the dismissed persons with qualified, competent and ethically upright officers required. The officers at the senior management level should have been given enough power to enable them to make decisions that relate to the safety and health of themselves and the other workers.  

Workplace safety and risk management is an important aspect of a workplace environment management. Failure to comply with this aspect is highly prosecutable and punishable under the Work Health and Safety laws. Under section twenty seven of the Work Health and Safety laws, officers in a business undertaking have an obligation to ensure that the business complies with the law (Gunningham & Sinclair, 2017). An officer, in this case, must wield substantial influence and control of power in the business undertaking so that he/she can be in a position to make decisions that ensures compliance with the Work Health and Safety laws.

A Canberra construction corporation was fined $ 1.1 million for poor safety management and lack of a risks management system. Kenoss Contractors Company was found guilty by the ACT industrial court of workplace safety breaches that led to the death of Michael Booth.  Booth who was a subcontractor had gone to deliver some load of gravel type material to a fenced off compound adjacent to a road resurfacing project under Kenoss Contractors Company (The Canberra Times, 2015). The court found the company to be in contravention of section 27 of the Work Health and Safety Laws and regulations.

References:

ABC News. (2015). Canberra construction company fined $1.1 million over death of truck driver. Available from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-19/construction-company-fined-1-million-over-workplace-death/6708032

Abubakar, U. (2015). An overview of the occupational safety and health systems of Nigeria, UK, USA, Australia and China: Nigeria being the reference case study. American Journal of Educational Research, 3(11), 1350-1358.

Bahn, S. (2013). Workplace hazard identification and management: The case of an underground mining operation. Safety science, 57, 129-137.

Bahr, N. (2014). System Safety Engineering and Risk Assessment (2nd ed., p. 38). Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Bailey, T. S., Dollard, M. F., & Richards, P. A. (2015). A national standard for psychosocial safety climate (PSC): PSC 41 as the benchmark for low risk of job strain and depressive symptoms. Journal of occupational health psychology, 20(1), 15.

Biggs, H. C., & Biggs, S. E. (2013). Interlocked projects in safety competency and safety effectiveness indicators in the construction sector. Safety science, 52, 37-42.

Ellen, M., Kosny, A., Ståhl, C., OHagan, F., Redgrift, L., Sanford, S., … & Mahood, Q. (2016). Systematic review of qualitative literature on occupational health and safety legislation and regulatory enforcement planning and implementation. Scandinavian journal of work, environment and health, 42(1).

Enhance Solutions. (2015). Poor safety culture and lack of systems lead to fatality. Available from: https://www.enhancesolutions.com.au/blog/poor-safety-culture-and-lack-of-systems-lead-to-fatality 

Friend, M., & Kohn, J. (2018). Fundamentals of Occupational Safety and Health (7th ed., pp. 82-108). Lanham: Bernan Press.

Glendon, A., & Clarke, S. (2015). Human Safety and Risk Management (3rd ed., p. 40). Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Gunningham, N., & Sinclair, D. (2017). Leaders & laggards (1st ed., p. 224 pages). London: Routledge.

Hale, A., & Borys, D. (2013). Working to rule or working safely? Part 2: The management of safety rules and procedures. Safety science, 55, 222-231.

O’Neill, S., & Wolfe, K. (2014). Officers’ Due Diligence: Is Work Health and Safety an Accounting Problem. Journal of Health & Safety Research & Practice, 6(1), 15-21.

The Canberra Times. (2015). Kenoss Contractors fined Kenoss Contractors fined $1.1 million for workplace death. Available from: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/actnews/kenoss-contractors-fined-11-million-for-workplace-death-20150819-gj2fra.html

Zhang, S., Teizer, J., Lee, J., Eastman, C., & Venugopal, M. (2013). Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Safety: Automatic Safety Checking of Construction Models and Schedules. Automation in Construction, 29, 183-195. doi: 10.1016/j.autcon.2012.05.006