Today marks the end of the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner’s (OFSC) Hazard 2020 safety campaign. Twelve months ago the Federal Safety Commissioner, David Denney, launched the safety campaign targeting mobile plant and scaffolding hazards – the most common causes of non-compliance with WHS Accreditation Scheme requirements and onsite safety incidents reported by Scheme accredited companies.

Throughout this campaign, the OFSC has conducted over 300 onsite audits of builders accredited under the WHS Accreditation Scheme, where scaffolding and mobile plant hazards have been reviewed. Safety incidents associated with mobile plant and scaffolding have been tracked and reviewed. Information from these sources is instrumental in guiding the OFSC to work constructively with accredited builders to improve their onsite safety.

Feseral Safety Commissioner Denney said that that preliminary results of the campaign where mixed. “Encouragingly, we have seen solid improvements in most areas of mobile plant safety throughout the campaign. However, the data shows a serious and worsening problem across industry for scaffold safety.”

Almost four thousand individual sub-criteria have been reviewed by Federal Safety Officers at on-site audits of Scheme accredited companies throughout the campaign. Overall:

• Over 900 corrective actions have been issued, the detail of which will provide a level of insight into the consistently recurring issues companies are facing in attempting to manage these hazards.
• As of 18 October, accredited builders have reported 137 incidents involving either mobile plant or scaffolding hazards. Significantly, one-third of these incidents have been categorised as severe or life threatening.

“My office is continuing to analyse the audit and incident reports from the campaign and will be publishing findings over the coming months. I will also announce where to next for the OFSC and industry in addressing the issues highlighted during the campaign. We are committed to continuing to work with our accredited companies to make the industry safer, and this is only one step on a much longer journey.”

Fact sheets, video case studies, monthly data reports and webinar presentation videos are all available on the Hazard 2020 page. End of campaign data and a final report will be forthcoming, also published on the OFSC website.