Health and Safety in Construction

The construction industry sector in New Zealand has a historically higher rate of injuries when compared to other countries. Although most industries are associated with some level of risk, the construction industry is deemed particularly high risk when it comes to health and safety.

With risks such as heights, excavation, heavy machinery, hazardous materials, and underground services (vibration, noise, and dust), inherent dangers must be identified and mitigated. As project managers working on construction sites for various sectors, TSA understands first-hand the importance of reducing risk to help ensure the safety of the site, workers, and the public for our clients.

We have dedicated Health and Safety Advisors for our construction projects to provide additional oversight and leadership. Our Advisors help provide leadership and ensure contractors strive to achieve and improve on health and safety standards. At the same time, the contractor maintains health and safety responsibility and management. The Advisors cover all health, safety and environmental aspects, providing overall benefit for the project and the people on site.

Our Health and Safety Advisors provide a collaborative approach to health, safety and the environment. They act as the ‘eyes and ears’ for the client and constantly look for opportunities to improve overall health and safety performance. This includes planning health and safety activities in a structured environment such as 12-week look ahead and current and forward reviews, focus and early identification of high-risk activities (HRA), daily activity briefings, safety walks, observations, reporting and analysis of trends.

The role can also include leading critical risk site walks with senior leaders, sub-contractor risk containment sweep, worker engagement including participation and awards, weekly HRA audits, sub-contractor evaluation and review, trades packages review and enforcing safety stand downs if required.

Our Health and Safety Advisors bring extensive industry experience in health and safety roles. Their roles have included undertaking on-site audits and reviews, working with companies to embed health and safety behaviours and advising Site Safe members and industry leaders on Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) matters. They have also developed, delivered, and facilitated interactive and engaging training sessions for a wide range of workers and industry leaders to help improve systems, behavioural awareness, and SHE knowledge.