Plant health and safety guide

Under the OHS Act, employers must consult with employees when identifying or assessing hazards or risks associated with plant and when making decisions about risk controls. Your employees include independent contractors you have engaged and any employees of the independent contractors who perform work you control or should control. If health and safety representatives (HSRs) have been appointed to represent employees, consultation must involve those HSRs.

Employees can make major contributions to improving workplace health and safety. Regular, proactive consultation can help identify issues in the workplace and you, as an employer, can build a strong commitment to health and safety by including all views in the decision-making process.

All consultation information

When identifying hazards associated with plant in your workplace, you must consider all aspects of the plant, such as:

• installation, including erection
• commissioning
• operation
• maintenance
• decommissioning and dismantling

You also need to think about the types of injuries that could occur as a result of unsafe plant.

Other plant hazards may arise from noise, radiation, vapours and gases, pressure, electricity, fire, explosion, moisture and extreme temperatures.

Designers and manufacturers should try to anticipate what could go wrong in all aspects of the plant operation and life cycle, including plant or systems failure, maintenance and ergonomic issues and the potential for human error.

The more you know about possible hazards, the better. You should get as much information as you can from a range of sources, including:

• advice from specialist professionals, such as engineers
• discussions with designers, manufacturers, suppliers or employers with similar plant
• incident and injury reports from health and safety organisations
• reports and articles from safety journals, technical standards and databases

Work through the following list to control risks associated with plant at your workplace. In many instances, a combination of approaches will result in the best solution.

1. Eliminate the hazard
   The best option is to remove the hazard completely, so you should always try to do this first.
2. Substitute safer plant, use engineering controls or isolate the plant from people
   If you can't remove the hazard, think about changing the equipment or processes used.
3. Use administrative controls or personal protective equipment
   If you can't change the equipment or processes, try to change the way the work is done.

It's important to review risk controls regularly to ensure they are applied correctly and to monitor the controls' effectiveness.

Review and, if necessary, revise risk controls whenever there are any changes to the workplace that could increase risks, such as changes to the way the work is done or to the equipment used.

A review is also necessary if controls are not adequate or if an HSR requests a review.

You should also review your hazard and risk controls and make sure they are appropriate before using an item of plant for the first time.