Why are our people still dying?
WITH THE TWO RECENT DEATHS bringing the total this year to five in forestry, the question still remains: Why?
On one hand, it’s personally challenging for everyone who identifies with logging or forestry in general, as ‘our industry’, to do the soul-searching and ask ourselves why our workmates are still being killed on the job.
It’s confusing too, as our industry is small, so we all know somebody in the crews our deceased workmates were in. They are all skilled, competent and caring individuals with a passion for their work.
On the other hand, we need to back ourselves for what we are doing differently now. Many of you have worked hard to change long-held attitudes to safety. The recent community hui held at short notice in Gisborne last month in response to a worker dying is an example of how we’ve changed.
FISC’s Fiona Ewing is responsive, understanding and fully engaged with our workers. She is leading our industry in many ways towards more engaged safety processes including the learning processes they’ve developed.
As we search for answers, it is important to look at the bigger picture and see that our Forest Industry Safety Council is well engaged with many contractors’ people. FISC teams are working hard to get projects delivered. It’s possible we were optimistic when we set a three-year life for the Council. Some would say we had to limit the outlook for FISC and what it could achieve in that time; making it clear it was not necessarily a ‘forever’ intervention. Two years are coming to an end soon. More needs to trickle down to the people at the bush-line.
And yet, much has been achieved, at least from this writer’s perspective. The videos, alerts and other tools and tips being promoted to smartphones from SafeTree by FISC, driven by our own leading contractors, are excellent.
My perspective includes working directly on FISC’s Contractor Certification action group with four FICA members, comprising three contractors and an independent forest manager. Our project manager was relentless in achieving what we need to do, including the need to benchmark the proposed system against existing standards from ACC and others. She led our group to overcome several unexpected hurdles. We’ve now got what I think is going to be a very smart solution. I trust that you will agree when you get to see and use it.
With the best of intentions, this system will come to market about 12 months after it was set out in the “Agenda for Change” originally proposed by the review team. But, significant obstacles were encountered and overcome. Good things take time, they say.
The Forest Industry Safety Council is set to deliver some game-changing tools to help everyone and the reception has been fantastic so far.
Around 130 of our 220 FICA members registering to become certified as soon as possible, while a further 53 contractors signed up directly with FISC. That response is absolutely remarkable.
When contractors see how practical and easy-to-use the new SafeTree Contractor Certification System is, we will see more positive change for those who engage.
Such a response indicates attitudes have changed. For the better.
NES for Forestry
Thanks to the response from government departments, the industry-initiated ‘National Environmental Standard for Forestry’ has now been completed and will come into effect from May 1, 2018. But there are some important considerations for forestry contractors:
• Before this date, you will need to know that your forest manager doesn’t miss something that stops your crews from going to work.
• Under some of the tighter new NES rules, any gaps in harvest planning by your forest manager could be business destroying for you if you can’t mobilise your crews and machines as planned.
• Teething problems in putting this policy into practice at regional councils may well cause you losses even though the forest manager needs to fix them.
• From the start of the year, prudent contractor principals would be well-advised to be engaged with your forest managers in order to save your own bacon.
NZL