Working at Heights forum on the 13th May tis designed to discuss and assist WAHA in the development of a Working at Height programme along with a number of other organisations to improve the quality of training offered and the acceptance of a programme to gain the confidence of industry and by so doing start to reduce the numbers of persons injured or dying from falls at height.

The Forum will be held at 3M whom I would like to thank for the use of their meeting room at;

3M Australia Office

1 Rivett Road

North Ryde

New South Wales 2113

Meeting at 3M May 13th 9.am for coffee or tea with the forum starting at 9.30am

The meeting will be from 9.30am to 3.0pm

Please forward RSVP to confirm your attendance to

Richard Millar CEO@gmsail.com or ring Richard on 0477 788 045 due to Covid we have a limit on the number of people who can attend and need to confirm the persons attending with 3M

Parking is available at 3M visitor entrance off Rivett Road, the office is conveniently located near Nth Ryde Metro train station being a short walk to 3M office.

Persons whom are coming to the forum are from various industries and associations representing a wide range of companies, along with NSW regulators.

You will meet with and hear from;

Mr John Makris

Partner

Kingston Reid

A leading NSW Workplace Health & Safety Lawyers practising within the areas of workplace and occupational health and safety matters in the New South Wales legal market who has been  been identified by the state’s employment law barristers and solicitors for his  expertise and abilities in these areas.

Karlene Knighton
Acting Manager

Harm Prevention and Compliance Programs | Construction Services Group

SafeWork NSW

To provide an insight to the work Safe Work is carrying out to strengthen the understanding of the risks and mitigation of death and injury working at height

Michael Biddle

Chairman of the Working at Height Association

Michael has over 17 years’ experience in the height safety industry as a manufacturer, RTO Manager and Director of a height safety installation and distribution business

David Etheridge

David has experience in construction as a PCBU with a back ground in the supervision of those working at height

The forum is to look at way industry looks at working at height and how industry can make a difference reducing the deaths and injury in the work place

We will look at the costs of fall incidences not just the dollar costs but the emotional pressures that these incidences place on all those involved along with time lines losses, production delays in work out put and the pressures placed on management.

Over the years WAHA, Safe Work and other individuals prepare and print many documents containing thousands of words related to the risk of working at height to bring the message to those at risk and still it does not improve the injury and death rate remaining fairly constant.

With this in mind Working at Height Association Australia following many discussions and queries related to persons working at height have prepared this forum with a view of improving the quality of training experienced by those being trained for working at height, acceptance of training competencies inviting persons from industry to discuss these changes and how to improve the quality and delivery of the training now found in the market today.

How those training competencies are interpreted and applied are up to the respective RTO’s.  This leaves the end users (companies and organisations that are mandated to work at height) with the dilemma of identifying quality curriculum and training through a process of trial and error which can be disturbing when you are working with a transient work force or contractors providing services.

Further, for large end users, who may operate in multiple locations across the state and country, they are left with the challenge of contracting a single training organisation to service the entire company’s training needs or hoping that multiple training organisations may be teaching similar content and techniques.   Both of these solutions are seldom successful for the end user, or for that matter for the training organisations who must staff up significantly to service the needs of a single large client. This adds cost, time delays and introduces inconsistencies in information delivery across employees of the same organisation.

This has led to the situation where a student can  receive a significant variation in the quality of their course content and assessment, yet receives the same qualification as each other, we would at the forum look at what the minimum level of knowledge the industry would accept and how industry can assist in ensuring this occurs.

Following discussions with Safe Work ACT and QLD they have requested that we keep them informed on the progress and discussions to assist in their work, related to the same endeavor with QLD suggesting that once COVID is settled we could in conjunction with them repeat this forum in QLD.

 

Many thanks

Richard

Richard Millar

M:  0477 788 045

E Mail; ceo@waha.org.au