Construction work involves many businesses and undertakings involved in the same task or activity (for example suppliers, contractors, and building owners). This means there may be multiple businesses that owe a duty to workers and other persons.
There may be multiple people or businesses that are responsible for the duty of care to workers and others on-site. Therefore, more than one person can have the same duty. When it comes to sharing duties, all parties have responsibility. In these situations, all parties need to consult, coordinate and cooperate so they can all meet their shared responsibilities.
Some examples of duties you are likely to share include*:
- Managing risk
Identifying hazards, assessing, and controlling the risks. If the risk cannot be eliminated, minimise it. Regularly review your controls to ensure they are effective
- Worker consultation, engagement, participation, and representation
Ensure that workers are consulted. This involves sharing information, giving workers a reasonable opportunity to express views, and taking those views into account before making decisions on health and safety matters. Consultation may also occur through the builder talking to subcontractors and asking them to share information with the subcontractors’ workers and pass any feedback back to the builder.
- Information, Training, and Instruction
Ensure that workers receive relevant information, training, and instruction to protect every individual from risks to their health and safety arising from construction work carried out.
- Notification
If a notifiable event occurs, you must notify the Regulator as soon as you become aware of the event.
- First aid
Ensure that your workers have access to first aid equipment and trained first aiders. If you share a workplace with other businesses, you can coordinate sharing first-aid resources with them.
- Emergency plans
You have a duty to prepare, maintain and implement an emergency plan at your work. Consult, cooperate and coordinate with other businesses that you share overlapping duties with to coordinate emergency procedures.
What are some ways you can ensure that people are not harmed, and that you are complying with your legal obligations?
- Set clear health and safety expectations and incorporate these into your agreements with contractors
- Ensure contractors have appropriate health and safety procedures in place
- Prepare a Site Specific Safety Plan (SSSP) for the job and share it with all workers and contractors. A SSSP, also known as a WHS Management Plan or Health and Safety Coordination Plan, may be required by your relevant state/territory (based on a contract value or in the case of WA, the number of persons likely to be on-site)
- Establish health and safety reporting requirements with your contractors. A great tool for this is to use the HazardCo App to complete SWMS, Risk Assessments, site reviews, Incident Reports, and more.
- Ensure site inductions take place. Communicate site rules and procedures to everyone who accesses the site.
- Get workers to sign in and out of the site. This can be done via the HazardCo App by scanning the QR code located on your Hazard Board.
- Set up clear requirements for information sharing for the duration of the project
- Ensure that there is effective communication between all parties (e.g. Toolbox Meetings through the HazardCo App)
- Monitor your workers and/or contractors you engage
* This is not a full list of duties, it is important to make yourself familiar with health and safety duties for your relevant state/territory or talk to our Advisory team if you have any questions.
Whenever there are multiple businesses on-site at once it can be a bit confusing who is responsible for what.
The simple rule of thumb is each business must do what they can, within reason, to keep everyone safe. This relates to their own team, other workers or anyone that steps on-site. The best way to do this, work together and communicate.
It’s everyone’s responsibility
On-site it is everyone’s responsibility to manage health and safety. Businesses must work together to keep all workers on-site safe. Chances are there will be overlapping health and safety activities and obligations when multiple companies are working together.
In this case, it’s critical everyone follows the 3C’s – consult, cooperate and coordinate.
By following the 3C’s businesses are ensuring that everyone is aware of any overlapping duties, so roles can be clearly defined and work isn’t impacted.
The importance of communication
Communication is key. Worksites are busy places. With contractors and subcontractors coming and going, there are a lot of moving parts. To maintain a safe working environment for all, communication must be prioritised.
If a new team comes onto site, make sure to run them through a full induction.
If it arises there may be an overlap in responsibilities, seek them out straight away and follow the 3 C’s.
Covering the gaps
When there is an overlap, why is this communication important? Two reasons.
Firstly, it allows both parties to clearly define roles and responsibilities and establish an action plan for how health and safety will be managed.
Secondly, they may recognise risks that you may not and vice versa. Working together can increase the scope of the hazards recognised – ultimately making site safer!
Gaps can occur when businesses:
- Have a lack of understanding about each others roles
- One assumes the other is responsible for a risk
- The business managing the risk is not the best equipped to
- Not knowing the works other businesses are undertaking
Understanding the extent of your duty
When there are overlapping duties on-site, how do you determine the extent of your duty? You will need to consider the extent to which you can influence or control the risk in question.
This can be determined by considering the following:
- Control over the work activity – if you are the business managing or running the work being undertaken
- Control over the site – if you are the main contractor or subcontractor
- Control over your team – a business will have more control over its own team or contractors than others on-site
Ultimately, the more influence and control you have over the site or workers, the more control you have over the risk – the more responsibility you have.
Working along other businesses is a natural part of residential construction. Everyone on-site has a duty to open up the lines of communication and look out for each other.
One of the most challenging parts of managing any site is the volume of subbies, contractors, and visitors on-site at any one time. Adding to this, each individual will bring their own thinking and commitment to health and safety, so it’s important as the site leader you set the right tone from the outset, harnessing smart and easy to use tools on the HazardCo App.
Because when your subbies all use HazardCo – everyone benefits.
Saving time on-site can help everyone get the job done quicker. With all your subbies using the same system, everything follows the same format, making it much quicker and easier to find the information you need, when you need it. There is also less time chasing everyone for paperwork, and site inductions done can be completed by the subbie or their team members, on their own smartphones so it doesn’t take you away from the job at hand.
HazardCo makes this super easy with the QuickShare feature which lets subbies add their health and safety activity to your project on the HazardCo Hub. All at the touch of a button. Your subbies simply need their own HazardCo membership to enable this.
When your subbies are members of HazardCo too, it means no double handling – once a report or activity is created on the App it can be shared with you straight away. It’s easier for your subbies as they have clear and replicable forms on the App which they can share directly to your Hub… it all adds up to less time on paperwork and less visits to the site office. With the App’s time saving features all available in the palm of their hand, there are no excuses for not doing it, and your subbies don’t have to try and remember to ‘do it later’.
Perhaps most importantly of all, by sharing your information and activity quickly and easily, you’ll both be on the same page when it comes to health and safety for your site. This means you are doing the right thing by yourself and your wider crew.
Whether or not you believe in the well-known phrase, “the customer is always right”, there is no doubt that the customer or client plays an important role in the success of your job.
One way to give them confidence and make those day to day conversations easier is to demonstrate great health and safety management whenever they’re on-site. Using HazardCo’s smart App and online health and safety system, it’s easy to stay on top of site health and safety, and you always know who is on-site in real-time.
Most clients will be inexperienced when it comes to building and site management, and some will want different levels of involvement and visitation to site. By encouraging site visits, you can ensure there are no surprises for your client, and as the project progresses you can manage expectations or discuss changes as necessary. In most cases, this is a significant financial investment for the client – meaning stress and worry can be high, so take the stress out of health and safety using HazardCo’s smart online tools.
Clients should be accompanied whilst on-site. Getting your client to use the HazardCo App to scan in and out of site for each visit, will help you keep health and safety top of mind for them too, because as much as they own the property, you own the construction site. It’s an important reminder that everyone is responsible for health and safety, including the client. This includes being responsible for ensuring the safety of contractors and team at work, including ensuring all projects have a Site Specific Safety Plan and Hazard Board.
Many clients will be unaware that they also have health and safety responsibilities, so share this with them, and show them how HazardCo’s clever system helps you cover all of the bases. This will give them peace of mind that you are on top of site health and safety, giving greater confidence in a successful job.
It’s important that these expectations are established at the start of any job. Meeting with your client to discuss timing for site visits, and frequency on-site. The same rules should apply to them as any other visitor, including receiving a site induction, scanning in and out of site every time, dressing appropriately, and checking the hazard board.
By bringing your client on your health and safety journey with HazardCo, you will be in for a five star review, giving them peace of mind about the job.
Are you conducting renovations? Did you know that the same risks apply as a new build that you need to consider when it comes to health and safety on-site? Here’s the low-down on what you need to know.
Firstly, think about how you will manage health and safety on-site and how you will communicate this with other people involved in the build, such as the homeowner, or other contractors on-site. This will ensure that everyone is on top of the site hazards and practicing good health and safety during your build.
HazardCo Site Packs
A HazardCo Site Pack is ordered for each significant job, such as a new house build. They contain site-specific resources for that job, including:
- A Site Specific Safety Plan ,
- Scan in board with QR code for sign-in,
- An optional site specific Hazard Board
How can you determine whether you need to order a HazardCo Site Pack?
- Are you the main contractor?
The main contractor should be the one that creates a Site Specific Safety Plan for that work, and this should be shared with all subcontractors involved. This will ensure workers are aware of the risks and hazards that are involved in the job at hand. Throughout the job, there should be ongoing communication between all parties, and the risks reviewed regularly on-site
- How long will the renovation take?
Anything over 2 weeks should require a Site Pack, however, it will depend on the project that is being undertaken. If you are unsure, just give the HazardCo team a call on 1800 954 702and we will guide you through it.
- Will you be making any structural changes?
Using a Site Specific Safety Plan will help identify the controls that will be put in place to manage this risk, generally, this type of work can take time, and therefore we recommend ordering a Site Pack and using the HazardCo App to assist your health and safety needs onsite.
- Will you be engaging subcontractors?
If subcontractors are going to be engaged in the work, then a Site Pack will likely be needed, but this also depends on the type of work and length of the job. So if you’re unsure, just give us a call and we will be happy to assist.
Any property built before the year 2000, could contain asbestos. Using a Site Specific Safety Plan helps identify the controls that will be put in place to manage this risk. We will go into more depth about the dangers of asbestos next week.
A few recommendations from HazardCo
We recommend that you use the HazardCo App and Hub to manage your on-site health and safety. At the beginning of each day, complete a Risk Assessment on the HazardCo App. This will help identify that the work area is safe and ensure that you have the correct controls in place for common construction hazards. Due to the nature of renovation work, It is important that you consider noise and dust and how you control these risks.
At the end of the day, make sure that you tidy up the work area and ensure that everything is made safe. If the work area cannot be entered after hours due to work or health and safety risks then this should be clearly communicated to your client. We recommend that this is also documented to them via an email or text message so you have evidence that this has been communicated.
Remember to use the HazardCo App to report any incidents or near misses on your site. You will receive a confirmation email that will help guide you through the next steps.
Also, remember to record your Toolbox Meetings with your team. We recommend that you complete 2 Toolbox Meetings per site, per month. This demonstrates good consultation and communication with your team.
If you have any questions about your renovation work, give our friendly HazardCo Team a call, so don’t be shy – get in touch with us and we’ll help you make your site a safer one.
A wise Desmond Tutu once said, “There is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.”
And Health and Safety is no different. We know that Health and Safety can feel daunting, overwhelming, and even impossible at times, but it can be accomplished by taking on just a little at a time.
You can get your on-site safety on track this year by just starting one step at a time. Health and Safety is a team sport, you can’t do it by yourself, so you need to make sure everyone is involved, and scanning on and off site is a great place to start to create behavioral habits. Encourage your subbies and everyone on-site to create a habit of scanning on and off of your site every day with the HazardCo App.
When workers are engaged in work Health and Safety, everyone benefits. Your business is a healthier and safer place for everyone, performance and productivity increases, and a more engaged workforce means better builds, a stronger and more well-regarded brand in the market, more work, higher margins, and ultimately more money! What’s not to love?
Most people know how to, and do operate safely, recording activity – that’s what you need, and once you have that sorted – the rest is a piece of cake.
If your subbies already have the HazardCo App you’re already halfway there. Now you just need to get them to use it and make it a regular and consistent part of their workday on-site.
It couldn’t be any easier. All your subbies have to do is simply open the HazardCo App on their smartphones, scan onto your site using the unique QR code located on your site’s Hazard Board and they will be able to successfully complete a contactless induction onto your site! As the Main Contractor, you will have full and real-time visibility of scanning activity stored securely in your Hub – and what’s more? you’ll be stoked that your subbies are supporting your Health and Safety efforts.
Bottom line? Safe sites are better sites. So make it a priority this year to make Health & Safety top of mind, and get your subbies using our scanning feature on the HazardCo App today.
For you, for your team, for the families waiting for you at home. Safety first, always.
If you need a hand getting started or would like more information, get in touch with the friendly HazardCo team today.
Things can get pretty hectic on a construction site so it can be hard to find time to keep on top of everyone and everything. With HazardCo’s Quick Share, the latest innovation in health and safety, subbies can now share their on-site activity with the main builder – all online and at the touch of a button. It keeps builders and their subbies on the same page when it comes to health and safety, and gives them both one less thing to remember to do later.
HazardCo created Quick Share to let subbies easily share their on-site health and safety activity with the main builder. Subbies no longer have to find, download, and print or email reports since Quick Share does the sharing for them. It works on the HazardCo App so it’s all online and shared instantly, meaning less paperwork, and since there are no delays there is also less chance of being chased by the site supervisor for health and safety activity.
When subbies use Quick Share, the main builder has a better view of what’s happening on-site and more peace of mind that everything is being completed as it needs to be. It also saves the main builder time since they don’t need to chase their subbies for that paperwork.
The online HazardCo Hub retains all activity created by the main builder for a site, as well as any activity shared by their subbies for that project. With all health and safety activity saved in one place, on-site health and safety becomes more streamlined.
Quick Share saves both builders and their subbies time and makes sure they’re on the same page when it comes to health and safety. True to HazardCo’s purpose, Quick Share is yet another feature that helps HazardCo members create a safer site and have more time to focus on the job at hand.
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