Health and safety site reviews crucial tool for wellbeing of construction industry
Health and safety site reviews, which some often refer to as audits, are essential for any industry.
Site reviews provide your business assurance that the right health and safety practices are in place and that hazards, risks, and other issues that might prevent your company from operating safely are being assessed.
Having regular health and safety reviews throughout New Zealand’s construction industry has never been more important.
According to WorkSafe statistics, from May 2020 to April 2021 construction had 5955 injuries resulting in more than a week away from work, while from November 2020 to October 2021 the industry had 14 fatalities – both figures ranked second highest in the country.
Additionally, from May 2021 to April 2022, the construction industry had 444 people report injury, illness, or serious harm as a result of work, the highest figure nationally.
As a leading advocate for positive change to the culture of health and safety within New Zealand’s construction industry, Site Safe is proud to be able to provide the industry with SiteRight, its own safety review system powered by ecoPortal.
Woolworth’s New Zealand has been receiving these reviews for about seven years.
Head of construction, Rob Jones, said he was “glad” the advisors auditing safety were overseeing projects from a “fresh set of eyes”.
"I don't want to hear just the good news you know I want to hear the bad news, but I have been seeing reports recently of a couple of jobs that have been coming in at 65 per cent opposed to 90 so I'm glad to see that when it is actually a low score that [way] we can address it.”
SiteRight was a “useful” tool and having external reviewers viewing live construction projects provided “comfort” to both himself and the health and safety department, Jones said.
It also helped Woolworths with “raising awareness of safety” and reaching their goals to zero harm in the workplace, he said.
“They’ve got this external sort of independent audit happening on a monthly basis which I think it … just keeps [health and safety] front of mind for the live construction project and all those supervisors.”