Health and Safety in the Built Environment

Contents

Work Health and Safety policy.

Work Health and Safety roles and responsibilities.

Emergency procedures.

procedures:.

Consultation and hazard reporting procedures.

Facilities.

References.

Work Health and Safety Policy

Work and health safety also known as occupational health and safety. It includes the management of risk to the safety and health of the workforce at the workplace. The health of the employees includes the safety of all the people who works in the organisation and it also includes customers, suppliers and visitors. Initially, it may take money and time to devise these safety practices and installing all the safety tools and equipment. However, it is scathing to the success of the organization. If not taking any actions against that could also outcome in legal proceedings, penalty and loss of the skilled and talented staff.

There are several benefits if WHS in the business: -

It is mandatory to create a safe environment and it is a legal environment to create a safe environment for work. It also helps in long run to get the desired success of the company and also makes the organisation successful in the market. It helps in many ways

  • It keeps all the staff safe
  • It also improves the productivity of staff
  • It also reduces the injury illness
  • It also helps in reducing the cost of illness and injuries and compensation of the workers.

It is necessary for the business to put all the safe practices as soon as business started. According to the laws, business must make sure the health and safety of all the workers and do not put the health and safety at risk while work is going on the business (Ergonomics: The Study of Work, n.d.).

  • Provide a safe environment to all the workers
  • Maintain all the machines and structure of equipment safely
  • Offers safe manner of working
  • It is the responsibility of the organization to make sure of safely handling all the storage of machinery, substances and structures.
  • Offers and preserve all sufficient facilities.
  • Offer all information and data, training, guidance, instruction and supervision required for the safety.
  • Monitor the worker’s health and situations at the workplace.

The policy of work health and safety policy includes these things:

  • Risk assessment
  • Employees consultation
  • Preserving the plant and tools
  • Handling the equipment safety and use of substances
  • Responsibility of authority and delegation
  • Monitor, information, instruction and supervision
  • Training of staff
  • Supervising risks and hazards
  • Emergency processes

Work Health and Safety Roles and Responsibilities

Roles and responsibilities of the work healthy and safety are written in Work Health and Safety Act (WHS) 2011. The act provides some rules and responsibilities to the person conducting a business, it is required to take care of all, the workers, suppliers and the manufacturers as well.

There are some rules and responsibilities that applies in the WHS act 2011.

  1. More than one person can carry out the same duty
  2. A duty of any person is not transferrable
  3. A person can carry out more than one duty
  4. All the risks are managed to make sure that they can be mitigated, or reduced.

According to the WHS act, the business has some major duty to care of to make sure that workers and other person are not under risk of their health and safety.

The organization should meet all its obligations, to offer a safe and sound healthy workplace for workers by making sure:

  • All the systems of work should be safe
  • Work environment should be safe
  • Provide accommodation for workers if required
  • Use the plant, structure and substances very safely
  • Check if the welfare for workers are sufficient
  • Set alerts and notifications of any workplace incidents
  • Sufficient information, guidance, supervision is given to the workers, training about safety manual is also provided
  • Acceptance of all the requirements that come under the health and safety situations
  • Effective system should be in place to monitor the worker’s health and conditions of workplace.

The company or business should also have consultation regarding work and health safety for the workers. The company will also have to fulfil the further responsibility if it involved in particular kinds of activities like: -

To manage and control the workplace’s fitting to any plant at workplace

If involved in supplying, designing, manufacturing, importing of plant, substances or structures then supervise all accurately and properly Installing, constructing or commissioning of machines or plants (Construction Work, 2012).

Emergency Procedures

Occupational health must include the promotion and maintenance of the standard degree facilities to take care of wellbeing of the worker in all kinds of businesses. Organizations should promote physical, mental and social well-being of all workers in all kinds of occupations. There are some issues related to health and safety environment at work place. These issues include, health of the employees also includes safety, it required to emphasis on wellbeing not just safety. Health and safety are two different terms. Health means to protect the people from getting illness and safety means to protect the people from all kind of injuries. There is a target that is made by Australia government and this target has to achieve by the all by the year 2022.

To reduce in the number of fatalities to workers because of injury at least by 20 percent.

To reduce the rates of incidents of claims of musculoskeletal disorders resulting in one or more weeks off by at least 30 percent (OSHA, 2012).

There are some most dangerous industries that need to follow all kinds of emergency and safety measures.

Workers don’t know the heaviness and bulkiness of the object and they lift the objects. This is the main reason of getting injuries to the workers in the industries. In 1999, around 420,000 workers were suffering from back pain injuries. One more hazard factor, this is falling objects, and other types of equipment. It is the responsibility of the organisation to make the employees and workers aware about all the safety measures and emergency procedures while moving towards manual material or while handling the materials storage. There are following illnesses and suffering cause to workers;

Sprain and back pain while lifting the heavy objects or loading the objects improperly or unloading the material improperly.

Fractures in all parts of body and bruises in all parts of body because of the struck by material or sometimes employees get caught in pinching points.

Sometimes materials are stored improperly and cuts and bruises caused because of this improper organization of material.

It is necessary that workers should take some important measures while handling the material storage. It is necessary for workers to attach the handles or handlers with loads while moving the material manually. Moreover, workers should always wear the protective kit given to them by the organisation. Workers should know the techniques of lifting while lifting or doing storage material work manually. To prevent the injury from lifting material manually, the workers need to take care these points in mind.

Know the quantity and bulkiness of the load and the employee cannot hold it properly.

If employees cannot handle the storage material safely, they should leave it.

Employees should always use personal protective tools to prevent all kinds of injuries. They need to wear hand and forearm protection equipment like gloves. Employees should take care of the eyes specially. They should wear steel toed shows

The organization have to follow some measures to protect the staff and workers from any of the injuries at workplace.

Organisation have to follow some emergency procedures for the safety and wellbeing of the workers. To follow these emergency procedures is necessary. Organization should always give training the workers before handed so that they know everything about the emergency procedures. The main objective of the emergency procedures to make sure that all the workers and employees should be safe during any kind of emergency at the workplace. These are the procedures that each organization need to follow during an emergency situation (OSHA, 2012).

Procedures:

  • It is necessary to follow the social distancing till this pandemic of coronavirus is going on.
  • As soon as all the workers and employees hear the evacuation sound, they need to leave the building immediately. At this time, workers and employees need to secure confidential material and collect valuable material, shit down all the experiments going on, computers should be switch off, and switch of all the electrical appliances, tools, machines and equipment.
  • As soon as the fire alarm sounds to the ear, employees need to exit to safest place of the building.
  • If it is possible to take all the personal belongings. Don’t run and don’t panic to collect the personal belongings.
  • If any person is disable then assist that person I n leaving the building or moving to the safest place of the building.
  • It is necessary to be calm but walk quickly.
  • If any major injury occurs in the organization to any person then it is necessary to call assistance very quickly, send another person to call security, inform the supervisor immediately, if the emergency is life threatening then immediately call phone security number. As different organization have different phone security number. It is mandatory for all the workers to have all the phone number including this security number. Try to fill the injury form immediately.
  • If the injury is minor, then contact the nearest first aid senior of the building. This injured person should send to the medical centre if required. The other worker should inform supervisor, and complete a medical and incident injury form.
  • It is necessary for the organization to install an emergency button or cord pull
  • It is also necessary and it is the part of emergency procedure to install emergency stop cables that has extended length and this cable can be accessed from all the locations of the building.
  • Organization should design an emergency stop switch and this switch has the function to reset so that the conveyer can restart the switch.
  • All employees and workers have a prohibition to handle and ride all the storage material while any kind of threat is going on.
  • Necessary to equip all the cranes and cranes should have adjustable booms and angle indicator.
  • Instruct all the workers that lift only that material storage that is already safe and secure to lift.
  • It is necessary for all the workers to take extra precautions while doing functions and operations across the fire line.
  • Supervise and instruct workers to always carry hoisting chain and ropes and this rope should be free from all kinds of kinks, twist and it never wrapped around the material loaded.
  • Direct workers on how to maintain the sling angle so that this sling does not get loaded excessively as of their capacity.
  • Teach workers to use sharp edges to prevent the cut from the cutting slings.
  • Make sure that all the cranes are working properly and the crane person checks the crane frequently and regularly and if required any maintenance then install all the things required.
  • It is necessary to remove the damaged sling out of the service.
  • If any kind of fire broke out in the organization then it must raise the alarm first and to make sure the immediate safety of all the workers. Raise the alarm again if one alarm is not sounding enough to all the workers, use a break glass alarm and shout fire, fire if there is no panel available. Try to evacuate the place immediately and move to the safe place. Give the number and room no to the security where broke out. Try to select the accurate fire extinguisher. Do now use water on anu kind of electric fire. Evacuate according to the instruction given by the supervisor and close the door where fire break out as everyone exits out. Do not run to get your personal belongings and do not re-enter in the building until it is safe to go there. Be there at the safe area till the time supervisor give any instruction.
  • If someone is threating the workers at the workplace then the worker has to follow some steps:
  • Try not to argue with the threatening person.
  • Do not try to get subdue with the person physically.
  • Alert other workers also to back away from all the workers.

Make the person calm and make him/her to leave the building (Safety, Health and well-being, n.d.).

These safety procedures are very necessary to follow. It is the duty of the organisation to take care of all the workers’ health and well-being. This is the reason why government make some legal procedures that need to follow all the organisations. For example,

  • In an organisation, the number of workers should be sufficient so that they can carry the load safely.
  • There should be safe system and method to work in the organisation
  • All plants and equipment are properly equipped.

Consultation and Hazard Reporting Procedures

Consultation is the requirement and it is a legal requirement. It is an important part of to manage the health and safety risks and standards.

It is very necessary to achieve the safe environment at they workplace easy but workers need to communicate with each other to get the desired environment. They should talk about the health and safety environment and its related concern to each other so that they can aware about all the things happening around regarding safety. They need work on finding out the solution of the issues going on around pertinent to health and safety. It includes cooperation among people who are managing and controlling the work and those who are performing the work or those people who get affected by the work.

Effective and efficient health and safety consultation have some other major benefits:

  • It helps in increasing the awareness and commitment towards the work. The workers who are involved in discussion of safety and health benefits then they will be able to take better decisions about it.
  • The working relationship will become positive because getting know the others points and ideas leads the organizations in a good path.

There are various situations where workers have to share the responsibility among them regarding health and safety to other person, there is a requirement to consult, co-operate and co-ordinate activities. These three things are necessary and help in addressing all the gaps and preserve the health and safety risks. If the workers don’t have awareness about the health and safety measures then these reasons can occur:

  • The holders of the duty will assume that some other person is taking care of the workers’ health and safety.
  • The person who always take action may not be best always
  • It is better to know the ideas and if the person is not having enough knowledge then it may lead to hazard and risk which can be exposed to others as well.

If all the persons cooperate with each other, co-ordinate with each other and consult with each other than the outcome can impact the health and safety in a good way. It is better to take regular consultation instead of taking the consultation basis on case. If any issue arises then going for the consultation is not a good and appropriate idea. Consultation helps in in identifying the problem or issue at the earliest (Flinders UNIVERSITY, n.d.).

Taking consultation is better is better in many ways:

Facilities

It helps in deciding the welfare facilities. These are the things that are provided for the workers welfare like toilets, drinking water, washing facilities, dining areas, change rooms, personal storage and first aid. It is necessary to consult with the workers to take the decisions about what facilities they are required and what facilities they will require in future. For instance, the number of toilets are enough for all the workers and the location of toilets are suitable for the workers or not, do the workers have sufficient accommodation place. These things need to consider if talk about the welfare of the workers. It is also necessary to get to know the type of work the workers are doing, what is the size and what is the location of the workplace. The process of consultation should also include things like access of toilet, cleaning of places where the workers are staying, maintenance facility provided to the workers (OSHA, 2012).

If these facilities are already given to the workers at the workplace then need to consult with workers about their health and safety representatives. If the representative think that anything needed or any facility can be expanded then the business will help in solving the issues that will arise in the future regarding welfare of the workers.

  • Necessary to consult with the workers about planning to make any changes that can influence the work’s health and safety. For instance, when; developing or creating a new item or planning to create a new plan, buying used or new tool or using any new material, constructing the infrastructure of business, changing the system of work like shifting the work rosters, procedures of work or anything pertinent to work environment.
  • It is necessary to develop some procedures for the workers so that they can follow the procedure for work activities. It is necessary to consult with the influenced worker while developing processes for; resolving the issues related to work health and safety, consulting about the workers’ health and conditions, supervising the health of workers and conditions of workplace, giving them information and training regarding all the benefits of health and safety precautions.

These procedures need to write and prepare a document of it so that it can provide clarity and certainty to the workers at the workplace. This can also help the workers in assisting and demonstrating acceptance. These procedures can be accessed easily by all the workers and so place them at the noticeboard or any other internet website (Safety, Health and well-being, n.d.).

References for Work Healthy and Safety Plan

Construction Work. (2012). Safe work Australia. Retrieved from https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/system/files/documents/1705/mcop-construction-work-v1.pdf.

Ergonomics: The Study of Work. (n.d.). Assessing the Need for Personal Protective Equipment: A Guide for Small Business Employers (OSHA 3151)

Flinders UNIVERSITY. (n.d.). WHS Management System Consultation and Communication Procedures. Retrieve from https://www.flinders.edu.au/content/dam/documents/staff/policies/health-safety/work-health-and-safety-management-system-consultation-communication.pdf. Accessed on 24th Aug 2020.

NCBI. (n.d.). Environmental Health and Safety Management System. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK55873/.

OSHA. (2012). Materials Handling and Storage. Retrieved from https://www.osha.gov/Publications/osha2236.pdf.

Safety, Health and well-being. (n.d.). Emergency procedures. Retrieved from https://www.safety.uwa.edu.au/incidents-injuries-emergency/procedures#procedures.

Title 29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). (n.d.). Part 1900 to 1910.999 (General Industry Standards).

Title 29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). (n.d.). Part 1926 (Construction)

Title 29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). (n.d.). Part 1910.1000 to End (General Industry Standards).

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